Archives for August 2007
More on the Fake-Degree Scandal
by Brendon Carr
Fakes are endemic in Korean corporations, says the International Herald-Tribune yesterday. And we’re not talking about fake handbags—society is grappling with the problem of fake people who claim degrees they don’t have.
How do all these fakes get themselves hired? And why do Korean employers emphasize the degree to such an extent? According to the IHT, it’s because employment background checks are useless:
Although some companies conduct their own aptitude tests to detect the best job candidates, the dependence on academic degrees persists.
Joo Tae San, the chief executive of Maxmovie, an online movie and performance ticketing firm, said he had no choice.
“There is no other way to verify a person’s competence,” he said. “Calling former employers or professors for comments and recommendation letters aren’t helpful because they will either not comment or only praise the person.”
Park Hyo Chong, professor of national ethics education at Seoul National University, agreed that personal recommendations were seldom useful. When Koreans talk about other people, especially for job recommendations, he said, “they tend to highlight their pros and hide their cons.”
My experience has been that the idea of the “worthless” background check is overstated. The truth is, while the critics are correct in that former employers are reluctant to offer frank comments on a past employee, in our practice we often find that the background check is not done at all. And that failure allows the real fakers—those who never went to the university they claim, who overstate their degree, or who claim work experience they don’t actually have—to get in.
Why are Koreans reluctant to offer an honest assessment of former employees? There are indeed social prohibitions on direct talk. But there are also (of course, this is Korea Law Blog) legal reasons. First of all, defamation and insult are crimes under the Criminal Code. People who are too frank frequently end up at a police station or prosecutor’s office having their time wasted. Additionally, the Labor Standards Act Art. 39 prohibits an employer from “having communications for the purpose of interfering with employment of a worker”. This, too, is a crime. The net effect is to zip the lips of former employers.
Korea is not unique in the threat of legal harassment looming over the heads of employers. Americans, too, are quick to threaten “lawsuit” for allegedly unfair descriptions of their job performance. (Civil lawsuit is a different kind of threat from criminal prosecution, to be sure.) But the salient difference for multinational employers is that the oblique, indirect signals people use to communicate the truth are different from culture to culture. Since the signals are harder to read, a prudent employer will slow down, and double-check everything. Speed kills.
UPDATE 9/2: In the comments section I’ve pointed out the place Korean employers could go to verify many US degrees: The National Student Clearinghouse, which can verify attendance and graduation from over 1200 schools.
China Capital-Adequacy Requirements For Foreign Investors: Same Deal Here
by Brendon Carr
Over at China Law Blog Dan Harris touches on the topic of minimum capital-adequacy requirements for foreign investors in China. Unlike Korea, where foreign investors are rarely required to provide capital greater than that required of Korean investors, China apparently demands that a foreign investor prove the adequacy of working capital. And it seems a lot of investors are exercised about it. But just because the Korean government doesn’t impose a requirement doesn’t mean it’s a real issue for investors here.
Capital-adequacy requirements mean a business plan is required, and some consideration of how much money is really necessary for the solvency of the business on an ongoing basis. There will need to be enough funds for local staff salaries and any expatriate manager’s salary, rent, and any capital expenses (computers, tables, chairs, telephone lines, Internet service, etc.) which are necessary to get set up. Anyone plunging into a business overseas without a clear and thorough business plan is headed for trouble.
Because Korean commercial landlords typically require enormous “security deposits” of 10 months’ rent or more, a company established at the minimum capital of W50,000,000 can quickly run out of money. Registering new capital costs a lot in registration taxes and attorneys’ fees, but if head-office support to the company is not registered as capital then it’s either a loan (also subject to reporting requirements, which can be expensive to comply with) or business income—which is taxable at ordinary income tax rates. Dan explains this in his post, but it goes the same for Korea.
Getting money back from the Korean subsidiary is limited as well. Funds can be retrieved only as dividends, which are taxed twice.
This is why I always recommend a branch office rather than a corporation—a branch is basically transparent for accounting purposes and can take money out (and put money in) without special procedures.
Rio Tinto-Alcan and You: Offshore Business-Combination Reporting under Korean Competition Law
by Brendon Carr
This morning on the CNBC ticker (I’m obsessive about my awesome portfolio of Eastman Kodak shares), I saw that Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Group agreed to merge with Canadian aluminum mining-and-refinery giant in a blockbuster US$38.1 billion transaction.
These two global enterprises each have substantial Korean operations, so this will be subject to review by the Korea Fair Trade Commission. But did you know Korea also requires certain offshore business combinations to be reported to the KFTC for competition-law review, if their combination may have effects in the Korean market? It’s true. So even if Rio Tinto and Alcan had no direct presence here, their merger agreed in Sydney and Montreal could be reviewed by authorities in Seoul.
Merger control is established under Art. 12 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.
In an offshore business combination, where the acquiring company (an “Acquiror") together with its group and affiliate companies under common control (basically anyone who consolidates their accounting together) has total worldwide assets or sales turnover greater than W100 billion (about US$107 million), and the acquired company (a “Target") has total worldwide assets or sales turnover greater than W3 billion (a little over US$3 million), then a sales test is used.
If both the Acquiror and Target have sales in the Korean market (this of course includes all products or services exported to Korea) greater than W3 billion (that US$3 million again), then under the MRFTA a business-combination report shall be required.
This report may be filed after the fact of the combination. KFTC may take 30-60 days to review, but with no response the deal is deemed to have passed review.
However, larger companies are scrutinized more carefully. Where assets or turnover of either Acquiror or Target exceed W2 trillion (about US$2.1 billion), MRFTA requires the offshore business-combination report to be approved before the deal may proceed to closing.
Korea is a large economy, but still a relatively small market for many multinationals. Yet the MRFTA’s rules on offshore business-combination review mean that while deals like the Rio Tinto-Alcan merger obviously trigger review, the KFTC has rights over a lot more smaller deals than one would expect.
LG to Buy Coca-Cola Korea Bottling Company
by Brendon Carr
Today it’s announced that LG Household & Health Care Ltd., which I knew as a detergent maker but which also makes cosmetics and beauty aids, is making a bid to be a diversified consumer-products company with a deal to purchase the Coca-Cola Korea Bottling Co., Ltd. unit from Australian bottler Coca-Cola Amatil. The deal price is being reported at various (highly various) values—JoongAng Ilbo says US$297 million, while DowJones’ MarketWatch says US$418-438 million. Guess that means due diligence is still underway, with more hard bargaining to come.
Amatil—itself one-third owned by the Coca-Cola Company—acquired the bottling operations from Coca-Cola Korea in 1998, after Coke had previously acquired and rolled up its several independent bottlers into a consolidated operation. Among them was Doosan’s Coca-Cola bottling company. This was, you may recall, the height of the Asian economic crisis (or, as we call it here in Korea, the “IMF Crisis") and at that time, Doosan was really circling the toilet bowl. Ten years on, not only is the company now back to financial health, but Doosan is making overseas acquisitions of its own.
But if you compare that 1997 price paid by Coke (according to the New York Times at the time, US$450 million just for one of three bottlers’ operations) to the 2007 price (between US$297 million and US$438 million), you can see that the Korean market—for Coke or for Amatil—hasn’t turned out as well as one would have hoped.
The “competitiveness” of the Korean soft-drink market is cited in the JoongAng Ilbo story as one of the factors. The paper says Lotte Chilsung (local bottler for Pepsi, by the way) has 44 percent of the market, CCKBC 14 percent, Haitai Beverage 14%—which leaves about another 25% in the hands of other soft-drink makers. That’s pretty surprising—the New York Times story from 1997 said Coke held almost 60% of the local market. There must be something wrong, like maybe the Times was describing the market for cola drinks as being the soft-drink market. Otherwise, that would be a really astonishing market reversal.
I think in this regard, we can see that having access to distribution through a Korean partner can be one of the keys to success in the Korean market. Distasteful as it is to concede that nationalism plays a part, for many foreign companies a major stumbling block is the fact that they are foreign. The problem may manifest in a variety of ways—consumer bias and official hostility (CCKBC has been the target of an unceasing “dirty tricks” campaign for at least seven years) and staff sandbagging it are always possible, but sometimes the foreign managers simply misread the market.
Housing Policy and the Korean Dream
by Brendon Carr
The average apartment in Korea, according to a recent report in the Dong-A Ilbo, costs W8,010,000 per 3.3 square meters (thanks to government edict, we can’t use the traditional unit of pyong). Think about those housing costs for a moment. The average apartment in Korea nationwide, which includes all those depopulated rural areas—sells for US$237 per square foot of gross floor area (net floor area tends to be only 75% of the gross).
This makes the average cost of a 32-pyong apartment (1165 gross square feet, 875 net) W256,320,000, or US$276,000. While this would be an incredible bargain in Palo Alto, Seoul is not Palo Alto. Far from it.
I live in a grand palace of a 43 pyong apartment (1565 gross sq. ft., 1175 net) which provokes oooh from average Koreans when they hear about the massive size of the spread my family of four occupies. The average nationwide cost of this size apartment is W344,430,000, or US$371,000.
In Seoul, the average price is almost precisely double that of the national average. The Dong-A Ilbo reports the average price per 3.3 square meters for apartments in Seoul now stands at W16.27 million (US$17,500). That same notional average 32-pyong apartment in Seoul is W520,640,000 (US$560,325); the 43-pyong, W699,610,000 (US$753,000). Again, these prices are medians, which means there are many units which are less expensive, and many which are more expensive.
For example, my partner Doil Son and I are working on a project which will involve the sale and purchase of a development that includes very luxurious apartment units in a building which has all the character and attendant services of a five-star hotel. That development features apartments which are on sale for the price of W35 million per 3.3 square meters. The 32 pyong apartment over there, with net floor space of 815 square feet, sells for W1.12 billion (US$1.2 million), and also carries a monthly management fee (for the other services) of thousands of dollars per month. It’s really nice; it would be grand to live there.
Alas, I live like a regular guy, and the neighborhood I live in is not doing me any favors with respect to property value. My own apartment is sited at the northwest edge of the central business district, perched on a low hill overlooking the building where Shin & Kim keeps its offices. It’s a seven-minute walking commute to Shin & Kim. But I don’t work there any more. My offices at Hwang Mok Park are further away—it takes 20-25 minutes to walk home from HMP, maybe 10 minutes by car. Because our district is still undergoing redevelopment, our per-3.3 square meters price is less than the Seoul average: In the current market, my apartment would fetch W500,000,000 or W11.63 million per pyong (US$345 per square foot), a real bargain in Seoul. I found it pretty affordable (indeed, I could still afford to move into a new apartment of the same size at the average per-pyong market price—but why would I?), and our key consideration was convenience of the location.
We bought our place at W8.6 million per pyong (W370,000,000—which at that time was US$308,333 because the exchange rate was 1200 to the dollar) in November 2003, so apart from notional foreign-currency gains my relative investment performance (only 8% appreciation per year) in this house has been poorer than the average increase in Seoul apartment prices over the five years since I bought.
But I am rich. My income level is considerably higher than the average Korean’s.
There are two factors at work in Korea’s housing-price bubble. Both of them are results of horrible government policy.
One is the loose-money policy of the Bank of Korea—until pretty recently the streets have been awash with cash dumped into the system to prop up the KOSPI and fend off “speculative capital” (i.e. foreign investors who might push restructuring), and all this cash has to go somewhere. Koreans traditionally know only one asset class: Real estate. That means only a fraction of the excess liquidity finds its way into shares, and the rest goes after real estate. So more won chases the same properties. And home prices galloped ahead as a result.
The second factor is that new supply of housing has evaporated as a result of deliberate policy choices of the market-hating Roh administration. The supply of new housing had already received a staggering blow from the 1998-2002 “IMF Crisis”, which put many developers out of business. Then Amateur Hour got underway. It is already extraordinarily difficult and expensive for developers to secure redevelopment rights and construction permits for the soul-crushing apartment blocks that Koreans all want to live in. Average time to market is 10 years, with three of it being physical construction and five to 10 years of pre-construction wrangling being involved in getting the legal side wrapped up.
In Kangnam, where everybody wants to live, it is now well-nigh impossible to get approval for any new construction or reconstruction (of existing complexes). Since everyone wants to live there, what this will do is price Kangnam out of the reach of any normal people.
(For those of you not living in Seoul, think of Kangnam as Malibu without the sun and sand, or Manhattan without all the interesting people.)
Thomas Sowell, writing in the Baltimore Sun, nails this factor in an op-ed about America’s housing crisis from August 8 titled ”Government regulations nurtured subprime mortgage crisis” (thanks to Instapundit for the tip):
While many other factors can be involved - rising incomes, population growth, construction costs - a scrutiny of the times and places where housing prices doubled, tripled or quadrupled within a decade shows that restrictions on building have been the key.
Attractive and heady phrases like “open space,” “smart growth” and the like have accompanied land-use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land.
In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth. Construction costs were seldom a major factor, for there was relatively little construction in places with severe building restrictions and skyrocketing home prices.
In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the “affordable housing” that politicians talk about so much.
There’s nothing we can do about the supply of land. That’s a constant. But the supply of developable land is another question altogether. To the extent that allowing more intensive use of the land we have could alleviate the cost of housing, I have to question why there are so many restrictions.
Instead of doing this, Korea has implemented virtually every wrong-headed prescription mentioned in this article. I’ve previously mentioned how the IMF Crisis interrupted the supply of housing. But we also have “green belt” zones around Seoul declared off limits to development, and we have severe constraints (including building-height restrictions) on development of land in the city. Thanks to Amateur Hour, we now have price controls on new apartments (try to find one for less than W600,000,000 this fall, the new government-mandated “price ceiling"), official pressure to reveal cost bases to ferret out “excessive profit” and “undue luxury”, and manipulation of housing loan ratios to make it more difficult for citizens to buy an apartment—now the required down payment is 60% of the purchase price.
How far is Korea from the “affordable housing” ideal? St. Louis-area consultant Wendell Cox’s Demographia site is a treasure-trove of information including an index of housing affordability. He published a housing affordability study for 2007, which uses a simple multiple of Median House Price to Median Household Income (the “Median Multiple"). Where average housing prices are three times’ Median Household Income or less, Cox rates housing as “affordable”.
The US market currently has a Median Multiple of 3.7, which implies that the US market is a bit out of whack with US income levels. A Median Multiple between 3.1 and 4.0 is “Moderately Unaffordable”, 4.1 to 5.0 “Seriously Unaffordable”, and 5.1 and above, “Severely Unaffordable”.
Where is Seoul’s housing market in relation to Wendell Cox’s Median Multiple? Remember, this is based on comparing the median cost of housing to the median income of the people who presumably want to buy that housing. According to the Chosun Ilbo last week, the Median Multiple in the city where I live and work is 17.8 for all housing stock, 19.5 for newly-built apartments of the type I am living in. I’m not sure where 19.5 falls on Cox’s scale—“Disastrously Unaffordable”?
There are two remedies for this imbalance in the Median Multiple: Increasing the income of the populace, whilst holding the line on further increases in housing prices; or bringing down the prices themselves. As an owner of an apartment, I’m not so sure how I feel about bringing down the prices, although my mortgage loan is paid off (after ten years of Cup O’Noodles and holes in my socks) so all I’ll really suffer is an erosion of notional wealth. But both of these remedies call for a reversal of current policies on development of new apartment buildings. We need cranes all over Seoul, building new and better apartments as far as the eye can see. When construction companies’ presidents are reduced to standing on streetcorners with a cardboard sign “Will Build for Food”, that’s when we’ll know we have enough apartments.
UPDATE 2/28/2008: This post continues to be one the most popular on Korea Law Blog. Apparently there are a lot of people interested in the Korean housing situation, including at Korean economic research institutes. (Who knows, though—they may be laughing.) See also these related posts on this topic:
Is There Really a “Glut” of Housing in Korea?
Watch the Construction Companies: Korea’s Canary in the Mine
More Property Fallout: Kwangju Regional Construction Group Foundering
Builders Having Trouble Moving Apartments in Seoul
Housing Bubble: Home Supply Down 30% in 2008
More on Land-Use Regulation and Housing Prices, Plus News From Seattle
900 Sq. Ft. Korean Apartment Construction Cost $150K
Not Law Related But Worth A Look
by Brendon Carr
I‘d like to take this opportunity to recommend one of my very favorite blogs—perhaps my favorite on the entire Internet, even given the competition posed by the Party Pooper and the Yangpa—as an aid to students of the Chinese language (which includes students of Korean, thanks to the thousands of Sino-Korean loanwords extant). This site is Hanzi Smatter, which has three years of hilarious archives featuring some poor schmuck’s ridiculously wrong “Asian” tattoo and a knowledgeable explanation from a Chinese or Chinese-American blogger whose hand I’d like to shake.
Today’s lesson involved the use of the characters
Why I Don’t Drive in Korea and You Shouldn’t Either
by Brendon Carr
I‘ve been living here in Korea for more than a decade since I graduated law school, and during that time I haven’t driven a car.
Somehow I stumbled across the Korea Beat weblog, which features high-quality translations from the Korean press (apparently as a study aid for the blogger) and the occasional lurid cheesecake photo—thanks for that!—and read a translation that perfectly captures why I don’t drive. It’s definitely recommended reading.
Korea handles automobile accidents according to an odd “blame-sharing” concept whereby both parties are always deemed to have some fault in the accident. The usual apportionment is 60-40. What this means is that the driver who caused the accident bears 60% of the responsibility (and therefore cost), and the driver who simply got crashed into gets stuck with 40% of the responsibility on some cockamamie theory that had he not been operating a motor vehicle he would not have gotten into the accident. So the 60% driver pays 60% of the damages incurred by the driver he struck, but receives from the driver he struck an offsetting payment of 40% of the 60% driver’s damages.
This concept on liability is so different from what Westerners are accustomed to and expect that a foreign victim of an accident is usually stunned at the weirdness of it all.
We had a client and friend, an avid motorcyclist, who got himself struck by a bus—from behind, after the bus blew through a red light. Our friend was still deemed 20% responsible for the accident even though he spent weeks flat on his back laid up in the hospital, and had to pay the bus company some settlement for its damages (this was offset against what the bus company owed him, of course).
The translated article at Korea Beat notes one absurdity that follows from the blame-allocation method followed here. If a driver of an expensive car recklessly smashes into a driver of an affordable car, that 60-40 split usually means that the “guilty party” has much greater damages. Luxury autos here run about W100,000,000—if that car is totalled through its driver’s recklessness and stupidity, the victim would have to pony up W40,000,000 for repair costs. If the victim’s car is worth, say, W10,000,000 and is totalled, the luxury-car driver pays only W6,000,000 for those damages.
So the innocent driver gets his car totalled and receives a bill for W34,000,000 from the guy who hit him. If his insurance policy limit is less than this, the net result of the accident is cash out of pocket for the innocent driver.
Add to that the equally frightening concept of criminal responsibility in all cases of personal injury by vehicle (I might write more on this in the future), and I am absolutely not interested in getting behind the wheel of a car. My office is a W1900 (basic flagfall) fare from my home, so my daily commute cost is only five bucks anyway.
Here’s the business-lawyer twist at the end: One of the common benefits to expatriate managers here in Korea is a company-furnished car and driver. That seems extravagant to an outsider, and as a lawyer who handles a lot of employment matters I get asked about the car-and-driver demand all the time. In my opinion, Korean law makes a car and driver (and a big insurance policy limit!) a very good idea for anyone who can afford it. (In essence, that’s what I do with the short-to-mid-distance taxis.) The time that one loses in the case of an accident is potentially too much of a distraction from getting the job done.
And going to jail for a simple car accident is something totally unexpected to an expat. You can’t get much work done from jail.
WSJ: KORUS FTA Dead on Arrival; Democrats Won’t Approve
by Brendon Carr
Thanks to an eagle-eyed Korea Law Blog reader who sent me this article (Thanks, reader!), we report that the Wall Street Journal says the Democrats won’t allow the United States’ Free Trade Agreement with Korea (KORUS FTA) to receive its necessary Congressional ratification. As I have predicted here and at the Marmot’s Hole, this deal—rightly or wrongly—suffers from a number of perceptions that conspire to make it unpalatable. Chief among them are that it doesn’t do enough to open Korean markets, when compared to the benefits Korea gets from US.
The Wall Street Journal says something is better than nothing:
In any case, the U.S.-Korea FTA is a big new opportunity for American goods and services. As soon as the deal goes into force, 95% of tariffs on consumer and industrial goods will be eliminated. Within a decade, almost all remaining tariffs will hit zero. In financial services, U.S. firms will have carte blanche to start up or acquire South Korean companies, part of Seoul’s aspiration to become a regional financial hub.
Agriculture has long been a bulwark of Korean protectionism, but under the deal more than half of all U.S. farm exports will receive duty-free treatment. The pact also guarantees that U.S. investors will be treated on a level playing field in Korean courts. And it sets up an international arbitration panel for U.S. firms that believe they’ve been wronged by the Korean government.
Even in autos, the pact is a big improvement over South Korea’s current protectionism. Last year Korea imported 4,344 U.S.-made passenger vehicles, while the U.S. imported more than 695,000 from Korea. Seoul has also failed to follow through on its 1995 and 1998 auto agreements with the U.S., but the biggest losers on that score have been Korean consumers. The free-trade pact would eliminate South Korea’s 8% tariff on passenger cars (versus 2.5% in the U.S.), and it would introduce a new mechanism to provide a head’s-up about Korea’s bad habit of imposing non-tariff import barriers.
The problem with U.S. autos in Korea is more than trade barriers, by the way. European car makers are subject to similar barriers, but their sales are doing just fine. It’s also worth noting that, while Ford and Chrysler oppose the FTA, General Motors does not, perhaps because it is doing well in its joint venture with Daewoo.
But the “something is better than nothing” view is only tenable in the case that one believes Korea is good to its word on international agreements. My observation is that Korea likes to belong to international agreements, but only to the extent that the agreements do not require Korea to do anything differently—i.e., signing an agreement is easy, abiding by the terms and spirit of that agreement is something else entirely.
How to Get Cheated Every Time: Ignore These Warnings
by Brendon Carr
(This was originally published at the Marmot’s Hole weblog December 5, 2005. But it’s timeless, and anyone considering trading with Korean residents ought to read and heed. Probably this is good advice for China too, but I don’t know the patterns of doing business with Chinese. What I describe below is absolutely typical for disaster-story credit losses based on my experience.)
I am constantly consulted by foreign businesses who got suckered by “the Koreans”. By that time it’s usually too late for these poor bastards.
My advice for people doing business for the first time in Korea: CASH ON THE BARRELHEAD. NO CREDIT, NO WAY, NO HOW. Not because Koreans can’t be trusted (if 99.9% of 50,000,000 Korean people are completely honest, that leaves 50,000 bastards you can’t trust — lots of ways to get cheated) but because the legal system leaves no remedies in the case you are cheated.
The story always goes thus:
Mr. Kim: “Here is Kim, CEO of Kimsco World Incorporation, CO., LTD. We big company in Korea, know many people in government. Now we have big project bid going and Kimsco will order 10,000 of your esteemed company’s prestigious widgets. Please must to give good price and quick delivery. Project gonna very urgent now.”
Suckercorp: “Thanks for your inquiry Mr. Kim. 10,000 units at unit cost $100 each will come to $1,000,000. Please make payment by telegraphic transfer or irrevocable letter of credit, or bank guarantee.”
Mr. Kim: “Your price very high. We are contacting your competitor now. Please to cut price unit cost until $70 each. We have big order later on; many more projects here in Korea. Kimsco World Incorporation CO., LTD. now business very good. Don’t worry — my friend Mr. Han will sign contract. I am using his name for company due to unfair government harassment. But don’t to worry about that.”
Suckercorp: “That will be a stretch, Mr. Kim, but we can do it. Please transfer US$700,000 to us.” (Geez, this sale is kind of a loss leader, but this will be my first inroad into Korea, and soon I’ll be selling to all the Korean companies! What a goldmine! I’m going to be a hero here at Suckercorp and the richest salesman in Springfield!)
Mr. Kim: “Bid very urgent now. Government says we must have product before bid can be approved. But my friend (very powerful in government) says we will win if we have your widgets. Now very urgent. Don’t worry about payment. All under control.”
Suckercorp: “Okay, Mr. Kim. Because this is so urgent and we value your goodwill, we have shipped 10,000 units to you. I’ve upgrade shipping to FedEx air freight; don’t worry — we’ll be responsible for that extra cost. We’re looking forward to working with you. Please advise on payment.” (The air freight touch is genius! I’m going to be rich off all those future commissions!)
Mr. Kim: “Thank you for quick shipment well received. Bank L/C or guarantee too expensive. We will pay by T/T much cheaper. But now economy not so good, all SMEs are difficult now. Please to must understand our situation. Can we reschedule first payment $100,000? But still need 10,000 more units of widgets for big contract. Once bid approved Kimsco will need second supply top urgent.”
Suckercorp: “Umm. Well, I guess so, but what’s the date of this first payment again?” (Should I do some due diligence on this guy?)
Mr. Kim: “Cannot schedule first payment now. Economy still bad. Please you must understand our Korean special situation.”
Suckercorp: “Hey, Mr. Kim, we are willing to work with you on payment. Can you make a first goodwill payment of US$50,000?” (Getting worried now. Maybe I should check this out and get legal advice. What, that greedy lawyer wants $300 an hour? Screw that.)
Mr. Kim: [no response]
Suckercorp: “Mr. Kim, we’re becoming concerned. You’ve not kept any of your promises to us, and we are considering legal actions against you.” (Hmm, but $300 an hour is too damn much to spend.)
Mr. Kim: [no response]
Suckercorp: “Mr. Kim, respond immediately or we will commence legal actions against you.” (Why isn’t this guy answering e-mails or the phone anymore?)
Mr. Kim: “So sorry, Mr. Kim is on important overseas business trip and cannot respond. He will be back in six months. What hotel he in? We don’t know. Please don’t to bother us anymore.”
Suckercorp: What the hell? Maybe we should talk to that lawyer and do some due diligence. What’s the headquarters address of Kimsco World Incorporation CO., LTD.? Oh here it is: Doosan Bears Craptown Officetel, Guro-gongdan, Guro-gu, Seoul.
Brendon: Dude, you’re cooked.
I want to make sure that this information gets recorded so others might find it later and avoid the disaster foretold by the typical pattern I describe.
That story I made up above based on my experiences here, has about a million screaming red flags in it:
HURRY, HURRY - Speed kills. Slow it down.
“FAKE NAME” PROBLEM - Mr. Kim says in passing that Mr. Han, his friend, has “lent his name” as Representative Director of the company but that Kim is the real principal. This is common, but anyone sensible would ask why Mr. Kim needs to obscure the ownership/management of his company. What is he hiding from? This is one of the first red flags one could catch if legal counsel is consulted early.
BUSINESS ADDRESS - Although this was discovered at the end of my fictional tale, if Kimsco were indeed a major business its address would probably not be over there in Guro. A quick call to a knowledgeable and frank foreign or Korean lawyer (call the foreign lawyer!) could give one this judgment.
IS IT A REAL COMPANY? - And of course, we would pull the commercial register of the supposed “Kimsco World Incorporation CO., LTD.” to check if it exists at all. It’s available on line and costs us $1.00 to pull (and then my usual hourly rate to analyze and counsel). It’s surprising how often we find the company doesn’t actually exist.
NO CREDIT - If local banks and guarantee insurance institutions won’t extend credit to Mr. Kim, there’s probably a good reason. They know the limits of the local legal system better than you do — follow them. Any Korean counterparty who cannot pay in advance by T/T and cannot arrange intermediation by a trusted financial institution is not worth the risk. The banks are here in Korea and have much more staying power than a foreign company selling from offshore; if they won’t extend credit why should you?
BIG TALK - People who try to get over on you now with promises to make it up in the future are exploiters and cannot be trusted. It applies equally to sales of goods and services. Customers who ask for a concessionary rate now so that the vendor can get future work at full price are liars: Giving in to that game establishes one as an easy mark for exploitation.
MISSED FIRST PAYMENT - This is the big one. If there is no first payment, there will be no later payments either. You wouldn’t believe how many foreigners get burned by this one and reschedule again and again, all the while continuing to supply more goods or services to the Korean customer. (There’s another version of this one where the canny foreigner insists on partial advance payment: That first payment is made, because otherwise goods won’t be delivered. After that, no more money is released.)
ECONOMY NOT GOOD - We have been hearing versions of “economy not good” as an excuse for for eight years. You should translate it into English as “I’ve mismanaged my company into bankruptcy.”
PLEASE UNDERSTAND OUR SPECIAL SITUATION - Everyone is special. This means “I’m not taking responsibility.”
UNAVAILABILITY DUE TO BUSINESS TRIP - This one always cracks me up. We see it every time. In English, “extended business trip” means “he’s a fugitive from justice”.
So, what to do about it? Number one, although legal services may be expensive, getting ripped off is far more expensive. (Of course, it really burns when you choose the wrong law firm and your lawyers rip you off too. If there are six lawyers waiting for you in the conference room, run away — there are 10 more billing on the case in the back room.) Consult a lawyer at the beginning of your commercial transactions and 99% of disasters can be spotted in advance and avoided.
Credit reporting is becoming available. Use it. Get a credit report from the National Institute of Credit Evaluation, a joint venture with Dun & Bradstreet. Get reports on both the company itself and its Representative Director individually.
Never be an unsecured creditor. Unsecured creditors here have no recourse other than the criminal system. And the returns on that are not great: The police here put just about zero effort into looking for swindlers.
If assets are offered as security, have the security evaluated by a lawyer so you can be sure you’re getting what you think you’re getting. Last night we counselled someone on the advisability of accepting a fourth-priority keun mortgage on 500 sq. m. land and two-story commercial building in Mapo already encumbered to the tune of W730,000,000. Upon default and liquidation at auction, the other creditors would be paid out W730,000,000 before our client would see a dime of proceeds; they’re selling W1,100,000,000 worth of equipment — does that sound like a good idea?
Recently another foreign client who had gotten swindled out of millions of dollars came to our office with a “guarantee insurance” policy that their trusted agent had supposedly bought for them in Korea for a W6,000,000 premium. It turned out to be a “Silver Insurance” supplemental-health policy with a W1,000,000 benefit level and a W20,000 premium; the trusted agent had embezzled the rest of the money to buy a really swell computer for himself. It took me seconds to recognize the discrepancy but by that point they had been relying on the trusted agent as their only source of information about Korea for years.
Now, if you’re a knee-jerk defensive nationalist, these war stories might lead you to shriek “Brendon hates Korea, to criticize so much!” Far from it. My own experiences here, especially with the folks in [the firms I’ve worked in], have been really positive; our guys are 100% decent and 110% honest (too honest, if you ask me). But like I said earlier, even if 99.9% of Koreans are completely trustworthy that still leaves a lot of potential disasters out there.
Forewarned is forearmed.
[NOTE: The comments to this post at the Marmot’s Hole were great. Apart from too much insider griping about the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea (AMCHAM), I think there is a lot of value to the comments as well.]
Wall Street Journal on Korea Legal Market Opening: “Free the Lawyers”
by Brendon Carr
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial on the draft Foreign Legal Consultants Act ("FLC Act") which is up for a vote in the National Assembly. This is not a fisking per se, but additional—hopefully informed—explanation and commentary from a foreign lawyer who has been working in Korea a long time and someone who’s been waiting for this act just as long:
Thank South Korea for providing an example of just how much work is involved in becoming a global financial hub. Fresh off a recent drive to overhaul financial regulation, the National Assembly is now turning to legal-services reform. This time lawmakers are offering up notably less than a “big bang.”
It’s true that the “opening” offered by the draft FLC Act is less than a full market opening. It apes fairly closely (in Korea, copying what others have done is called “benchmarking") the limited legal market opening that Japan undertook 25 years ago. That “opening” was deeply unsatisfactory to the foreign law firms that planted their flags in Japan, because the limitations put on them—which are precisely the same as the limitations under Korea’s FLC Act—caused them to lose money for years. Or at least to endure low profitability in Japan.
One of the bigger hurdles to doing business in Korea is its “hermit kingdom” legal market. Foreign lawyers and law firms can’t hang out shingles or form partnerships with local firms. The few foreign attorneys who practice in South Korea must apply for exemptions from the regulations.
Right now, foreign attorneys who want to work in Korea can only do so by taking a job with a Korean law firm, an accounting firm, or as in-house counsel within a Korean company or multinational.
Foreign attorneys who practice in Korea now as foreign legal consultants within Korean law firms do so subject to no regulation at all. There is no “exemption” for which to apply: We’re completely uncontrolled by domestic authority. If not engaged in “unauthorized practice of law”, for which criminal sanctions apply under the Attorneys’ Act, the only supervision of foreign attorneys comes from their home jurisdiction’s bar association. And to be frank, that’s so remote it’s useless to Korean consumers—which is not good for the profession. Adoption of an FLC Act, regardless of its terms, is crucial to establishing some local supervision over the activities of foreign lawyers.
In addition, the supply of local lawyers is severely constrained. The bar exam is designed to be nearly impossible to pass; on average, only about 1,000 new lawyers pass the test each year. Because the legal community is tiny, conflicts of interest are a perennial worry for clients. Companies often resort to flying in lawyers from Hong Kong or Tokyo who do business out of hotel suites. The costs these regulations impose are difficult to quantify, but noticeable. It would be hard to find another country that ties so much red tape around its legal marketplace—not even China.
The supply of “local lawyers” is growing quite rapidly. When I first came to Korea to work as a foreign legal consultant in the summer of 1997, only 300 new lawyers could enter the profession each year. My partner Doil Son (admitted January 1995) tells me back then, “only super-geniuses” could be admitted to the bar. (He’s reliable on almost every topic, but somehow I detect some self-interest in that statement.)
The quota was increased in stages to 500, then to 700, and finally to 1000 by 2001. Still, for a country of nearly 50 million, that’s not a heck of a lot of new lawyers. But one important detail is lost when we look at these numbers: A lot of new Korean lawyers cannot find employment. The economy does not have enough local demand for their skills, and multinational corporations and foreign investors demand different skills which they don’t have.
This is important, so let me say it again: The domestic market for Korean legal services is not large enough to take up the supply of all the new lawyers graduating from the Judicial Research and Training Institute each year. And so the ones in the lower half of the JRTI who cannot speak English, or who do not have some other skill which can save their bacon, face joblessness or a very difficult market for sole proprietors.
For Korean lawyers who speak English well, and can learn the skills of being an advisor as well as a barrister (the Korean bar is primarily a litigation-focused profession, and all of their training is aimed at producing judges or prosecutors for the state), the job prospects really are limitless. It is these people who are in short supply, not lawyers overall. To the jobless or underemployed “domestic” lawyers, legal market “opening” raises the spectre of more competition for scarce clients if the opening pushes lawyers from the top of the market down to compete with them.
Conflicts of interest, and differing social standards concerning lawyers’ ethics, do remain a concern. One of the reasons why foreign clients and multinationals want to hire Paul Hastings instead of Hong Kil-Dong & Associates is that Paul Hastings has built up social trust in respect of the ethics demanded by those clients, and Hong Kil-Dong has on occasion shocked the hell out of them.
Korea is slowly addressing its shortage of local lawyers. The National Assembly recently passed legislation that will create American-style three-year law schools and revamp the bar exam. But the constraints on foreign lawyers remain a problem and draft legislation under discussion may not be much of a help. The Foreign Legal Consultants Act would allow foreign firms to set up offices in Korea. But it would still limit their ability to advise on questions of Korean law and, bizarrely, it wouldn’t allow them to call themselves lawyers—they’d have to use the term “foreign legal consultant.”
In my opinion, it’s not so bizarre that the FLC Act would limit the use of the word lawyer to describe foreign lawyers. It’s predictable. In this respect, Korea is benchmarking the two dozen American jurisdictions following the ABA recommendations which permit foreign lawyers to operate only as “foreign legal consultants” ostensibly to protect the public from thinking they had hired a local lawyer. In my state of licensing, Washington, a foreign lawyer is required to call himself “foreign legal consultant” or the title in her home jurisdiction together with the name of that jurisdiction. But Washington is more generous than other US jurisdictions.
Japan requires foreign attorneys to register as gaikokuho jimu bengoshi, or “attorneys of foreign legal affairs”. This is translated in English as “registered foreign lawyer in Japan” but is clearly distinguishable from a “real lawyer”. Anyway, Japan does allow the use of the word “lawyer” (as bengoshi is “lawyer”, the same characters as byonhosa in Korean). And as a friend has pointed out to me today, Hong Kong, the UK, and EU jurisdictions are also very generous in allowing foreign lawyers the right to use the title “lawyer”. However, at least with respect to Hong Kong and the UK, these are spectacularly open professions—and open economies generally.
As for me, I’m perfectly happy to be called “foreign legal consultant”—it’s the title I use now. Because I am a professional, I am completely open and up-front about the fact that I’m not admitted to the Korean bar. Every e-mail from me bears my title foreign legal consultant rather than “attorney at law”, and a statement that I am a member of the Washington State Bar (so clients know where to complain) but not admitted in Korea. I do this because it’s the right thing to do, and so the Korean rule applicable to foreign lawyers makes perfect sense to me.
More promising are provisions in the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement that would gradually pry open Korea’s legal market, paving the way for Korean and American lawyers to join forces under joint ventures. But even assuming both the U.S. Congress and Korea’s National Assembly approve the FTA, the opening would take at least five years and would help only American lawyers in Korea. Europeans would need to wait for their own FTA.
The Europeans are going to get their FTA first. The KORUS FTA hasn’t got much of a chance to get past Congress.
Other countries have been reforming their legal sectors for years. Japan concluded an 18-year opening process in 2005. Germany and Britain liberalized their legal markets in the early 1990s. Now South Korea finds itself the odd man out. That’s a warning to regulators and lawmakers everywhere. To compete effectively in the global marketplace, inertia, on legal reform or any other competitiveness challenge, is not an option.
Who can disagree with this conclusion?
If this topic was interesting, you might also take a look at a post I made over at the Marmot’s Hole last Christmas concerning the Korean bar examination and the profession generally. The comments section was particularly engaging and we drew in a very articulate Korean lawyer who mostly agrees with me (if you ask me, that’s direct evidence he’s another “super-genius”, of course!).
Great Photos of Historical Buildings in Korea
by Brendon Carr
Thanks to Kim Il Sung and Curtis LeMay, Korea’s historical architecture is hard to find. But the Marmot Robert Koehler does a fine job of finding what remains—his “Korea photos” posts at the Marmot’s Hole are always very impressive. This weekend he visits the Jeondong Cathedral but all of the Marmot’s past photo posts are worth a look.
What to Do When You Have to Sue: Attachment Orders Are Your Friend
by Brendon Carr
SiGong Law’s KoreaLaw.com has a couple new posts up since I last recommended people visit this resource, and one of them is on a topic which I had decided to write about here. Great minds think alike, I guess. Or perhaps the universe of commercial problems is small enough that good commercial lawyers end up talking about the same things.
Anyway, check out Filing Lawsuit in Korea: Overview, then come on back to Korea Law Blog for more. I actually have some differences of opinion with KoreaLaw.com in respect of litigation over commercial claims, and offer the following additional points:
Demand Letters Usually Hurt the Foreign Creditor. That doesn’t mean the creditor should not have communicated with the debtor in no uncertain terms about the existence of a debt or other obligation. However, concrete threats—such as “We will be forced to commence litigation” or “I have now engaged the law firm of So-and-So to handle this matter”—actually have strong potential to hurt the foreign claimant’s actual ability to enforce rights, because the closer that foreigner is to being able to really do something, the more incentive there is to hide assets from litigation.
Korean law is exceptionally weak on pursuing assets which a party may have hidden or fraudulently conveyed to escape creditors, so the best thing to do is to catch those assets before they can be transferred. To do that, it’s best not to give too many warnings you’re coming.
Now, this tidbit of advice doesn’t apply if you’ve already got good security in place—for example, a mortgage on property, or a bank guarantee, or a standby letter of credit (L/C). If you’re holding good security, huff and puff all you want. But for most people who contact us, who generally are completely unsecured in their position, I recommend against any law-firm demand letter at all.
Koreans aren’t impressed by the lawyer’s demand letter anyway. Until the writ shows up in their mailbox, it’s all hot air to them.
Learn From the Submarine Service. Submarines don’t announce their presence: When it’s time for combat, they get in place silently, then let ‘em have it. Same goes for you. My advice, therefore, is to first do an asset search (a good starting point is a Dun & Bradstreet/National Institute of Credit Evaluation report—available domestically through NICE or internationally through D&B). It’s in fact recommendable to do this at the commencement of any credit relationship, but at this point we’re past that.
Once you know where the assets are, then freeze the assets by application for a pre-judgment attachment. Pre-judgment attachment applications are an ex parte process that takes place without the participation of the party whose assets are being attached—this is truly a “silent strike”.
Once frozen, then it’s possible to approach the opponent from a position of strength. Frozen bank accounts and an attachment on real properties tends to focus the discussion quite a bit.
Pre-judgment attachment requests require that we prove (i) the existence of a claim or controversy (i.e., the basis for the attachment), and (ii) identify the asset with some specificity. This latter requirement can be burdensome: If we don’t know, for example, where the target keeps its bank accounts, it’s not possible to attach those accounts.
And pre-judgment attachment requests do require the petitioner to provide substantial security (or “bond") in the form of cash on deposit with the court, or a guarantee-insurance policy from Seoul Guarantee Insurance Corporation. The bond amount would range from 10% to 40% of the claim amount (usually 20-25%) at the discretion of the court; the choice of whether all-cash, guarantee insurance, or some combination of those is also up to the discretion of the court.
Many would-be foreign litigants shy away from making an attachment, because they fear somehow losing their bond. After all, a security deposit is offered on the condition that it could be forfeited. Don’t get too caught up in that possibility: The security deposit is only forfeited in the case that the court finds there was an abuse of right in the attachment application—in other words, there was no real claim or controversy to argue over. Nobody with a real claim has any risk of forfeiting the bond.
Still, in terms of tipping the balance of power back in your favor, the pre-judgment attachment cannot be beat. Don’t let assets get squirreled away from the grasp of an attachment order by rattling your saber prematurely.
UPDATE 8/24: Today a colleague brought me Sean Hayes’ “Lex Pro Bono” column in the Korea Times ”Preliminary Attachments Encourage Settlements”. Having seen KoreaLaw.com, and this very entry on Korea Law Blog three weeks before Sean published, the content is strangely familiar. Sean’s article, which presents a question supposedly from a Hong Kong exporter who’s been stiffed by a Korean customer, makes the same recommendation as KoreaLaw.com’s earlier piece and this weblog entry, except that Sean repeats the same recommendation re: demand letters that I differed with above.
I’d like to forcefully restate my objection to the attorney demand letter. In Korea, stealth is absolutely vital to preservation of assets. Announcing that you’ve engaged a law firm before assets can be attached amounts to blowing the starter’s whistle before you’ve got your shoes on. DON’T have an attorney send demand letters; it is a BIG mistake.
UPDATE 10/4: Sean Hayes has written to share the point that demand letters may not be harmful, and amicable collection efforts not backed by an attachment may be successful, in the case of a major Korean conglomerate. Those companies’ assets aren’t going anywhere, and surprising them with an attachment order may unnecessarily engender ill will and hamper the eventual resolution of the collection effort. That’s probably true, but in my experience foreign creditors may overestimate the size and scope of the company. The moral of the story? Get credit reports at the beginning!
And I’ve also had the experience of arguing with Korean conglomerates’ managers about how even though their predecessor had made the commitment, it was a corporate commitment and not a personal one—thus the company’s liability shouldn’t change based on personnel reassignments. So I’m not sure that they’re all that much better.
Forms of Entity for Your Local Presence in Korea
by Brendon Carr
One of the most common questions we get from clients is how to “set up an office in Korea” because the client needs a local presence of some sort. Local presence can take a lot of forms, and depending on the client’s need one size definitely does not fit all. So what’s different about the various forms of entity?
Liaison/Representative Office. The “lightest” form of local presence is a liaison or representative office (for simplicity, we’ll call it “liaison office"). A liaison office is formed by report to the Bank of Korea under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act (FETA); no foreign-investment approval is required.
A liaison office may rent commercial office space, hire employees (and make contributions to their employment related withholding taxes and insurance premiums), and purchase anything necessary for the business.
In terms of its operations, the liaison office may do market research, support customers with technical know-how, hold informational meetings, and similar (money-spending) activities. However, a liaison office cannot, under any circumstances, engage in “revenue-generating” activities. Nobody in the liaison office may have anything to do with sales or marketing of any of the company’s goods or services. If they get overzealous and start finding customers, the liaison office will be deemed a permanent establishment (PE) of the company, and its Korean-source income will be taxable here in Korea. Tax evasion is a crime, and one which is pursued quite vigorously.
The liaison office will be issued a taxpayer identification number for Value-Added Tax payment purposes. VAT is an input-output tax, and businesses are entitled to offset VAT collected against VAT paid. But because a liaison office cannot engage in revenue-generating activities, it’s not going to be collecting VAT from anyone—just paying in. VAT is currently chargeable at a fixed rate of 10% on goods and services.
Branch Office. A branch office is an extension into the Republic of Korea of the main corporation, and is not a separate entity for liability purposes—because it is one and the same as the foreign entity to which it belongs. There is no limitation of liability as between the head office and branch office.
Similarly, accounts are transparent as between Korea branch and the head office—money may be transferred between them pretty much at will (provided that Corporate Income Tax on earned income is paid), which makes it much easier to fund a loss-making enterprise at first, and to add or withdraw operating capital as needed.
If limitation of liability is desired, a “paper company” or special-purpose vehicle could be formed on the back-end as a holding company. This would not be a good choice if the branch office is to be managed by an expatriate who needs a work visa: Visa category D-7 (Branch Manager) requires that the foreigner being dispatched to the branch have at least one year’s experience working for the head office prior to application for the visa. If the head office is a newly-established paper company, the expatriate can’t have been working there for the required year. (Additionally, this means that a branch cannot hire a new manager from the marketplace, if that manager is going to need a work visa sponsored by the branch.)
A branch office is registered at the local District Court’s Commercial Register, just as a company would be. It receives a taxpayer ID, and collects and pays VAT like any other business. The branch’s local income is taxed under the Corporate Income Tax Act.
A branch office can do almost anything a company could do, but is statutorily forbidden from engaging in manufacturing. If the Korean business is to manufacture anything here, a branch is not the right choice of entity. But because of the transparency of accounts, a branch is recommendable in all other cases.
Subsidiary in Corporate Form. Sometimes, though, a corporate form is necessary.
There are two corporate forms to choose from:
Joint Stock Company (chusik hoesa). The joint stock company is discussed in detail in my Korea Law Blog post Company Formation in Korea.
Limited Company (yuhan hoesa). In future revision to this entry, I will describe some features of the limited company.
US Beef Clearance Suspended Again
by Brendon Carr
Looks like that legal market opening may be delayed; I think the Free Trade Agreement may be a goner. Korea has suspended the import of American beef once again, this time after Cargill was apparently so sloppy they shipped over not just a few bone chips, which were the previous pretextual reasons to reject US beef imports, but a big ol’ section of spine! Mmm, spine.
One would think that a company like Cargill would be more careful, especially knowing that just a few fingernail-sized chips of bone could scuttle import of tons of beef. How could they be so careless?
My suspicion: There is a “patriotic Korean” somewhere in the US (perhaps a friend of these guys) who is deliberately sabotaging US beef exports to Korea (see the ROK Drop blog for some of the evidence in this direction). This person will be found in the next few weeks, but not before the Democratic Congress makes hay over Korea’s record as a trading partner. And this will cloud the prospects for passage of the KORUS FTA. This is a “George Bush” agreement that has to be sold to Congress, and his political credit is eroded to the point where I don’t think he could sell sex to sailors.
Wonderful Bloomberg Reporting on Lone Star
by Brendon Carr
Bloomberg today has a wonderful in-depth piece on the history of the Lone Star investment and imbroglio. It’s the best piece of reporting so far in respect of this matter, and well worth your time.
One key point in the article is how in 2002 Lone Star was the last chance for Korea Exchange Bank:
Korea Exchange Bank had already been rebuffed by Bank One Corp., BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Newbridge Capital LLC and Standard Chartered Plc, according to a Morgan Stanley memorandum dated June 23, 2003, a copy of which was included in documents submitted to the National Assembly’s Finance and Economy Committee for a parliamentary investigation in 2004.
No good deed goes unpunished.
This article also mentions the most important point: Our firm Hwang Mok Park is defending Lone Star in the myriad and endless criminal prosecutions. Senior partner Hwang Ju Myung was interviewed by the Bloomberg reporter at length, but as always the story tends to gloss over the fascinating and heroic lawyers and all the interesting legal nuances.
And I Thought Korean Workplace Relations Were Bad
by Brendon Carr
Normally I am an advocate of sticking to one’s guns in pay negotiations, but this seems excessive:
The owner of a car dealership has been accused of killing two employees because they kept asking for pay raises.
Rolandas Milinavicius has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28.
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