SOUTH KOREA Law and Practice Contributed by: Dongju Kwon, Changkwon Kim, Sejung Lee and Yoon Sun Kim, Yoon & Yang LLC
First Hearing At the first hearing, the plaintiff states its purpose of claim and grounds of claim in the complaint. Then, the defendant states its written answer/ defence or makes an oral response. In such response, the defendant requests the dismissal of the suit or claim and states whether it accepts each of the claims provided in the complaint. The plaintiff may respond regarding whether it accepts the defendant’s answer and/or submits a rebuttal brief to the defendant’s answer. Each party commonly submits evidence sup - porting its arguments together with the briefs. In this regard, the relevant facts in the case are argued based on the written and oral state - ments of the plaintiff and defendant. The court decides whether to accept the parties’ applica - tions for examination of evidence, considering the relevance of the evidence with the factum probandum in the case. After the court notifies the decision on such applications for examina - tion of evidence to the parties, it designates a subsequent hearing for pleadings and examina - tion of evidence. Examination of Evidence Under the CPA, at the hearings for the examina - tion of evidence, a witness should attend the hearing, swear an oath and make testimonies (Article 303). Further, the court may hold an explanatory session at the hearing, which nor - mally lasts for one to two hours, for understand- ing the case, including as regards alleged trade secrets and relevant technical information. As such, the court holds several hearings where it reviews and examines information/evidence to render judgment; when it considers that it has sufficiently examined these, hearings are closed and the court schedules the date when it will announce its judgment. The first-instance pro -
even though the parties have an agreement not to file one. Furthermore, the court may render a judgment without holding any pleadings when a defendant fails to submit a written defence before the judgment has been rendered (Article 257). However, this is at the court’s discretion and the CPA does not provide any application procedure for parties to demand that the court render such judgment. 5.11 Cost of Litigation It is difficult to provide a general estimate of the costs for trade secret litigation, as such costs are dependent on various factors, including the con - tent, type and complexity of alleged information and relevant technology, and on the complexity of the relevant case at hand. Most costs for trade secret litigation would be attorneys’ fees and technical expert fees. Con - tingency-based fees are permitted in civil cases. Litigation financing is not prohibited, but is rarely used in Korea. However, applicable laws pro - hibit a voluntary litigation trust, where an entity entitled to be a party to a lawsuit or to dispose of legal matters entrusts such lawsuit to a third party for litigation financing.
6. Trial 6.1 Bench or Jury Trial
In Korea, judges decide trade secret trials and there is no jury trial system for civil lawsuits. 6.2 Trial Process In Korea, the trial proceeds through several hear - ings designated by the court.
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