SOUTH KOREA Law and Practice Contributed by: Jin Yeong Chung, Inhak Lee and Seung Hyeon Lee, Kim & Chang
5.6 Rules Disallowing Disclosure of a Document The document holder may refuse to produce the document in the following cases: • government/official documents; • documents which may incriminate or defame the requested person or their relatives; • documents to which they have an obliga- tion of confidentiality or which contain trade secret information; or • a document prepared by the requested person for their own use (such as diary and notes). If there is risk of confidential information being leaked in the process of reviewing whether there is any legitimate basis for refusing production of the document, the court may, based on its dis- cretion, hold an in camera session and order the document holder to first submit the requested documents to the court for its review. In such case, the court is prohibited from disclosing those documents to other persons, including the parties to the case during its internal review. Neither the parties nor their counsel can partici- pate in this “in camera proceeding”. 6. Injunctive Relief 6.1 Circumstances of Injunctive Relief One can seek provisional remedies, even before filing the complaint, in the form of: • preliminary attachment; or • provisional injunction. A preliminary attachment is used to preserve and freeze the property or assets of a debtor (who is often the defendant in a lawsuit). This serves as security for discharge of a monetary
payment obligation by the defendant. The courts will allow preliminary attachments if the appli- cant establishes a need to preserve the assets, a prima facie, case in its favour, and shows that the assets are owned by the debtor (defendant). In case of the provisional injunction, there are generally two types. • The most common type of provisional injunc- tion is to temporarily prohibit the debtor from disposing of their property which is the subject matter of the dispute. The injunctions may be issued in cases where, if the existing situations are altered, the party becomes una- ble to exercise their rights, or there is concern over substantial difficulties in exercising it. • The other type of provisional injunction is to temporarily fix the position of the disputed right. This type of provisional injunction is issued when the petitioner is likely to incur substantial injury before the court can ren- der a final judgment in its favour. This type of preliminary injunction is different from other types of provisional remedies in that instead of securing the future enforcement of a favourable judgment, it seeks to protect the petitioner from present injuries caused by delays in the enforcement of their rights. Korean law and jurisprudence are silent on whether anti-suit injunctions, barring a parallel litigation in a foreign court, are allowed. 6.2 Arrangements for Obtaining Urgent Injunctive Relief The court usually issues a preliminary attach- ment order within two to three weeks from the application. Depending on the urgency of the matter, a decision may be issued within one to two weeks.
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