Strengthening ethics - a challenge for the legal community

Hwang Ju-myung speaks during a recent interview with The Korea Times in his office in central Seoul / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

By Oh Young-jin

Hwang Ju-myung is often referred to as "Judge Hwang" among people who know him.

The founder and chairman of HMP Law (H stands for his last name), one of the leading law firms, has spent only 12 out of his 60-year legal career, the rest being with corporations and law firms.

It does not take long to understand his nickname. The mild-mannered former judge is more judgmental than soliciting, talking with such honesty that one sometimes feels compelled to remind him that he's speaking on record.

During last week's interview, Judge Hwang was in his element when he talked about Korea's largest group of legal representatives, Kim & Chang, which is more like a consortium of lawyers rather than a law firm.

"Kim & Chang acts subserviently to big-money clients and that trickles down to its rank and file lawyers," Hwang said, referring to the belated disclosure of the beating and cursing of Kim & Chang rookie lawyers by Hanwha Chairman Kim Seung-youn's son during a meal out together.

That incident would have been kept secret if one of those "victim lawyers" had not come clean later and leaked it to the press. But the perpetrator apologized and went virtually unpunished because the lawyers or the firm did not press it.

"It is a matter of professional pride that has been seriously compromised," Hwang said. He pointed to the low esteem people have about the impartiality of the law. In a Korea Legislation Research Institute survey in 2015, only 26.6 percent of respondents agreed that justice was free of the influence of power and money. Some 43.3 percent thought otherwise.

He also remembers being embarrassed twice as a lawyer by Kim & Chang's practice of serving clients at both ends of a deal in a flagrant case of conflict of interest. "In overseas conferences, some foreign participants asked me whether one law firm might represent a buyer and a seller in the same merger and acquisition deal, "he said.

"We tell clients what we can deliver, not what we wish we could," Hwang said. True, that honesty has cost him clients, but he appears unwilling to give it up.

He was hard on young lawyers but with a great deal of affection.

"Some young lawyers have an unrealistic expectation ― getting rich in a short time," he said.

He explained that the expectation originated partially from when lawyers were selected through an elitist bar exam and their numbers were few. But now lawyers are plentiful thanks to law schools, which means many lawyers are struggling to make ends meet.

Hwang says he tries to reach out to young lawyers ― talking to them and listening to them ― but not always successfully, even if it won't solve their difficulties at once.

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"It stems from the problems we face in our society," he said. "It's a me, me, me society." Hwang, as a matter of course, added that those young lawyers were not the source of the big problem but one aspect representing it.

He took the unexpected case of confrontation when regular workers objected to irregular workers being put on the company payroll for fear that their share of the pie was dwindling.

"Don't we have to have empathy for the underprivileged ― those who are not as well off as we are," he said. "That is human nature."

"I don't believe that people lack that compassionate characteristic but somehow they have forgotten about it," Hwang said.

This situation is a result of a no-holds-barred competition, he observed.

The prevalent "my way or the highway" tendency makes it impossible for the current and previous powers to reconcile, resulting in a repetition of the new power trying to suppressing the old one. In other words, he sees what is happening now follows the history-set example.

Then, isn't there any solution? He said "not necessarily."

"Trust is hard to come by and that glue is necessary to bring the nation together and make progress again. Dialogue is pivotal to overcome these challenges, however unsatisfactory the first attempts may be."

He quoted from one book he recently read: Those in their 20s and 30s are not Koreans but citizens of an advanced society.

That means that the older generations, who are proud of starting from scratch to build the nation into what it is, shouldn't apply their rules to the young people and expect them to understand.

It goes back to the same basic: dialogue should be a two-way street, he said.

"A Samsung executive asked me why the company had so many problems even though it had a legal department of top-notched lawyers," he remembered. "I joked that it was because all of them were supposed to be yes-men." A yes man is the result of no communication ― speaking without listening.

He added that this story is less a criticism of Samsung than about Korean society in general ― Samsung being one of the few global industrial leaders in Korea.

All his critique doesn't make Hwang pessimistic.

"Goodwill is stronger than antagonism," he said. "Once seeds of hope are planted, they are there to blossom."

He remembered a recent trip to Denmark. There, he found immigrants were assimilated into Danish society irrespective of their background, coming to believe in the Danes' rule of law, equality, compassion and respect for human rights. "Danes do treat these outsiders as if they belonged to them," he said. "That is correct understanding. We, Danes, Koreans and other peoples, all fall under the same category ― human beings."

"For us, it takes time and we need to be patient, but we can also do it," he said.