[Bar Association President Election] Intense Competition Between Current and Non-Executive Candidates... Differences in Stance on Lotok Response (Comprehensive)

From the left, lawyers Kim Young-hoon, Ahn Byung-hee, and Park Jong-heun, candidates for the 52nd President of the Korean Bar Association election. Photo by each candidate's office.

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin, Legal Affairs Specialist] The election for the 52nd President of the Korean Bar Association, with three candidates running, is showing signs of a fierce contest and is becoming increasingly heated.

The next president to be elected will be involved in recommending eight Supreme Court justices, the next Prosecutor General, and the second head candidate of the Corruption Investigation Office during their term. Additionally, they face the difficult task of resolving conflicts with other professions such as tax accountants and patent attorneys, as well as private legal platforms represented by Rotok, drawing more attention than ever before.

The election, scheduled for January 16 next year, features three candidates: Attorney Kim Young-hoon (58, Judicial Research and Training Institute Class 27), who passed the Judicial Examination; Attorney Ahn Byung-hee (60, Military Legal Officer Examination 7th), who passed the Military Legal Officer Appointment Examination; and Attorney Park Jong-heun (56, Military Legal Officer Examination 10th, Class 31), who passed both exams.

Candidate No. 1, Attorney Kim Young-hoon, and Candidate No. 3, Attorney Park Jong-heun, currently serve as Vice President and Senior Vice President of the Bar Association, respectively. Although there are differences in degree, these two candidates are successors of the current Bar Association executive team and intend to maintain many of the policies promoted by President Lee Jong-yeop. In contrast, Candidate No. 2, Attorney Ahn Byung-hee, strongly criticizes the current executive team as "incompetent and abnormal."

Profile

Attorney Kim graduated from Seoul Baemoon High School and Seoul National University with a degree in Public Law, and completed graduate studies in law at Seoul National University. He passed the 37th Judicial Examination in 1995, was appointed as a judge at Daejeon District Court in 1998, and left the judiciary after serving as a judge at Suwon District Court to open his law practice in 2005. Currently, as Vice President of the Bar Association, he chairs the 'My Lawyer' operating committee established by the Bar Association to respond to private legal platforms like Rotok, and serves as the inaugural president of the 'National Public Defense Lawyers Association' under the Bar Association, which works to improve the treatment and protect the rights of court-appointed lawyers.

Attorney Ahn graduated from Gwangju Seoseok High School and Yonsei University with a degree in law. He completed both master's and doctoral courses at Yonsei University Graduate School. After passing the 7th Military Legal Officer Appointment Examination in 1986, he served as a military prosecutor, military judge, and legal staff officer of the 1st Army Corps before opening his law practice in 1997. He has held positions such as adjunct professor at Yonsei University Law School, arbitrator at the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board, and special prosecutor for sponsor prosecutors. He also served as auditor of the Seoul Bar Association in 2013 and auditor of the Korean Bar Association in 2017.

Attorney Park graduated from Daegu Dalseong High School and Seoul National University with a degree in Judicial Studies. He completed a master's course and attended doctoral coursework at Chung-Ang University Graduate School. After passing the 10th Military Legal Officer Appointment Examination in 1992, he worked in private companies and as an intern staff member at the National Assembly before passing the 41st Judicial Examination in 1999. Since opening his law practice, he has served as a legal advisor to various companies, Korea Railroad Corporation, Incheon International Airport Corporation, and Korea Expressway Corporation. Notably, he has held various roles in lawyer organizations, including Education Director of the Seoul Bar Association (2009), member of the Personnel Committee and Special Committee on Public Interest Litigation of the Seoul Bar Association (2011), Human Rights Commissioner of the Korean Bar Association (2012), Education Director of the Korean Bar Association (2015), Finance Director of the Korean Bar Association (2017), and member of the Reform Revision Committee (2019). Currently, he serves as Senior Vice President of the Korean Bar Association and Director of the Lawyer Training Institute.

Main Campaign Promises

Attorney Kim emphasizes his slogan, "Consistency between words and actions, the only candidate who keeps promises," pledging to be a president who actively works on the ground. He claims to be the only candidate continuing the current Bar Association executive team.

His pledges include ▲expelling private platforms through lawyer unity ▲strengthening the competitiveness of 'My Lawyer' in cooperation with courts and the Ministry of Justice ▲integrating similar professions and reducing lawyer output through reform of the law school system ▲establishing a lawyer mutual aid foundation to promote legal insurance ▲implementing quasi-lawyer compulsory systems through discovery and jury systems ▲significantly increasing remuneration for court-appointed lawyers and reviving criminal success fees to increase lawyer income ▲reclaiming the 2 trillion won-scale debt collection market.

Attorney Ahn's catchphrase is "Make the abnormal normal! Make the incompetent competent!" He positions himself as the only candidate to correct the current executive team's mistakes.

His pledges include ▲expanding punitive damages, abolishing unnecessary restrictions on lawyer advertising, introducing compulsory lawyer representation in appellate courts, and implementing external legal audits to double the lawyer market and income ▲introducing regular external accounting audits, making the nomination process for external committee members transparent, and banning executives from handling association cases themselves to halve executive privileges ▲forming a dedicated task force for National Assembly activities and establishing a nationwide special committee for profession protection and expansion ▲amending the Attorney-at-Law Act to limit advertising entities to lawyers to block private platforms.

Attorney Park emphasizes that he is the candidate with the "three harmonies of experience, ability, and character," pledging to create a "harmonious and unified Bar Association." He highlights his 15 years of consistent service in the Bar Association and Seoul Bar Association and his long experience teaching students and communicating with young lawyers as strengths.

His main pledges include ▲guaranteeing the "three rights of lawyers": survival rights, personal safety rights, and attorney-client privilege (ACP) ▲eradicating private platforms ▲establishing a legislative support center and dedicating the president to legislative activities to protect the profession ▲introducing mandatory lawyer representation to create new professions ▲ensuring opportunities for participation in association affairs and strengthening member capabilities ▲expanding member welfare ▲enhancing the rights of women and young lawyers.

Candidate Ahn Byung-hee's Direct Criticism of the Bar Association and Seoul Bar Association... Growing Impact

At the beginning of the election, many in the legal community predicted Attorney Kim's advantage. This was because many expected that the current Bar Association and Seoul Bar Association executive teams, which support President Lee Jong-yeop and Seoul Bar Association President Kim Jung-wook, as well as many law school graduates, would back Attorney Kim.

Although Attorney Park also holds an executive position in the current team, it was widely expected that the vote would not be significantly split. This is because Park ran as a candidate in the 51st Bar Association presidential election, placed fourth in the first round, and then supported President Lee in the runoff, joining the current executive team, making him less of a direct successor.

However, the race has become more competitive as Attorney Ahn, who declared differentiation from the current executive team, has intensified his criticism of the Bar Association and Seoul Bar Association executives. Originally, Ahn had support from somewhat experienced mid-career lawyers who disliked the disputes causing turmoil in the Bar Association, but recently, young lawyers fatigued by the current team's incompetence and excessive response to Rotok have increasingly supported him.

In particular, recent revelations about campaign materials that Attorney Ahn attempted to include in the first election print but were blocked by the Bar Association Election Commission have caused considerable stir.

Attorney Ahn included in the first election print information about current Bar Association executives self-assigning lawsuits against investigative agencies investigating the Bar Association's Rotok and lawsuits against media outlets critical of the Bar Association, thereby collecting fees, as well as Seoul Bar Association executives receiving basic salaries ranging from 3 million won to 9 million won for the president, with additional expense limits raised from 3 million won to 5 million won. After being sanctioned by the Bar Association Election Commission, two pages containing this information were deleted. However, reports that the court accepted Ahn's provisional injunction application have drawn even lawyers previously uninterested in the election to pay attention.

There have been rebuttals that "the executive members handled lawsuits the Bar Association had to conduct anyway at actual expense to reduce litigation costs," and explanations that "Seoul Bar Association executives did not actually receive the increased expense limits," but for lawyers unaware that Bar Association executives directly handled cases involving the Bar Association or were unaware of the salary and expense increases of Seoul Bar Association executives, this came as a significant shock.

In fact, some lawyers have shared the contents revealed through court rulings on their Facebook pages, harshly criticizing the current Bar Association and Seoul Bar Association executives.

A lawyer in Seocho-dong said, "Many lawyers who received Attorney Ahn's election materials by email were curious about the content of the two fully black-and-white pages," adding, "Later, when the court accepted Ahn's provisional injunction and it was reported that the Bar Association Election Commission blocked distribution of content related to executives' 'self-assignment' and 'self-pay raise,' many lawyers who learned this through media reports became more interested in this election."

Differences in Positions on Rotok Response... Highlighted as the Biggest Issue in This Election

Meanwhile, the issue of responding to legal platforms, which has emerged as the biggest issue in this election, also shows differences among the three candidates.

Attorney Kim, who has consistently advocated for the expulsion of private platforms and disciplinary actions against lawyers using them, pledges "expelling private platforms through lawyer unity." He intends to maintain the current executive team's stance on Rotok, pushing for amendments to the Attorney-at-Law Act to restrict private platforms, disciplinary actions against lawyers, and expansion of the public platform 'My Lawyer' operated by the Bar Association to expel private platforms from the legal market.

Attorney Ahn also opposes private platforms' market invasion but holds a different view on response measures. He believes that given the Bar Association's repeated losses in lawsuits related to platforms, disciplinary actions against Rotok member lawyers are likely to be overturned by the Ministry of Justice or courts. He argues that the root cause of legal platforms' emergence must be addressed by creating opportunities for young lawyers to promote themselves, fully disclosing court rulings, and opening legal access to fundamentally prevent the closed nature of the legal market. He emphasizes the need to pursue fundamental solutions such as amending the Attorney-at-Law Act to limit advertising entities to lawyers and mandating prior review of advertisements by the Bar Association instead of disciplinary actions.

Attorney Park takes the position that online platforms and legal tech are significant trends of the times and does not oppose them per se. However, he points out that current private platforms have the problem of being "intermediary platforms" and pledges to end the war against private platforms by explicitly prohibiting legal service advertising by non-lawyers through amendments to the Attorney-at-Law Act. He refrains from calling for disciplinary actions against Rotok members, noting that disciplinary actions have already been taken for violations of Bar Association advertising regulations, and differing disciplinary decisions on the same issue raise procedural and fairness concerns. However, he acknowledges the sharp disagreements and seriousness of follow-up disciplinary measures and states that such decisions cannot be made solely by the president but will be carefully considered with various opinions and circumstances.

In this election, conducted 100% through offline voting, the prevailing view is that the outcome will depend on how effectively each candidate can mobilize their supporters to the polling stations. The possibility of candidate unification near the end of the election remains one of the variables.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.