Case Analysis / Legal Updates

This is a case in the punishment-for-breach-of-trust litigation in which the question was whether a jiip (vehicle registration consignment) vehicle operator who created a mortgage to secure a maximum amount over that vehicle, after concluding the contract but before full payment of the installment price, held a position constituting breach of trust (a Korean criminal property offense whose closest common-law analog is criminal breach of fiduciary duty).

This case concerned the timing of attribution of gross income, for corporate tax purposes, of expropriation compensation received under a judgment in the plaintiff's favor accompanied by a declaration of provisional execution. This is the Supreme Court's determination regarding the timing of attribution of gross income.

This past September, the Supreme Court issued its first judgment recognizing that a substitute driver also qualifies as an employee under the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act. In this case, the court of first instance, the appellate court, and the Supreme Court all recognized that a substitute driver qualifies as an employee under the Trade Union Act.

This is a Supreme Court judgment holding that the representative of the company that placed the construction order, as the construction work orderer, was also liable for the industrial accident death. The Supreme Court held that the crime of violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act was also established as to the contractor.

This is a case in which, in the course of ordinary wage litigation, the issue was whether on-call duty and on-call standby hours constitute working hours under the Labor Standards Act. The following is the standard, as determined by the Supreme Court, under which such time is recognized as working hours.

This is a case in which, during corporate bankruptcy proceedings, a local government refused to approve the disposal of important property of a company to which it had provided a subsidy. The Supreme Court's judgment differed from those of the first-instance and the appellate courts, which had upheld the local government's refusal disposition.

This is a case in which a company in rehabilitation, while undergoing rehabilitation proceedings, filed a suit designating itself rather than its custodian as the plaintiff. This is a Supreme Court judgment reversing and remanding the lower judgment, which failed to take measures to determine the proper party.

Civil Damages This was a case in which the issue was whether, where a tort arising from a procedural violation at the contract negotiation stage infringes a personality-based legal interest, compensation for the resulting mental suffering may be claimed.

This is a Supreme Court judgment holding that the concept corresponding to the Trade Secret Protection Act must be interpreted identically to the concept of a ‘trade secret’ for which the inspection and copying of a written judgment is restricted under the rules of the Civil Procedure Act.

This is a Supreme Court judgment holding that, for the crime of illegal filming using a camera (a Korean offense of photographing another person's body against their will using a camera or similar device, broadly comparable to voyeurism offenses), where the object filmed is not the body itself but a body-image video received on a mobile phone, the conduct does not constitute the “act of filming a person’s body.”

This was a case in which the issue was whether the spreading of false information constituted a violation of the Public Official Election Act. It is a Supreme Court judgment on whether an expression raising suspicions about a campaign pledge amounts to the publication of false facts.

This was a case in which, during an unfair dismissal lawsuit, the determination of the number of regular employees to which the Labor Standards Act applies became an issue. The Supreme Court held that the standard should be the ‘number of employees used within Korea.’