Summer Kim and Grace Lee on building the bridge between UC Irvine and Korea through the Korea Law Center
Dean Austen Parrish interviews Professor of Law and inaugural Faculty Director of the Korea Law Center (KLC) Sung Eun (Summer) Kim and Grace Lee, Program Director for the KLC, about the mission, goals and ambitious programs of the Korea Law Center since its inception at UC Irvine Law in 2009.
(Listen on Spotify, Soundcloud or Apple Podcast)
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Austen Parrish
Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law
University of California, Irvine School of Law -
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim
Faculty Director, Korea Law Center
Professor of Law
University of California, Irvine School of Law -
Grace K. Lee
Program Director, Korea Law Center
University of California, Irvine School of Law
Featuring:
Podcast Transcript
Intro 0:04Welcome to UCI Law Talks from the University of California, Irvine School of Law. For all our latest news, follow UCI Law on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Austen Parrish 0:21
Thank you for joining us. My name is Austen Parrish. I'm the dean and the Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. This is UCI Law talks, the podcast where you learn more about the amazing and eater community that is UC Irvine Law, and also hear from leaders and lawyers of Southern California.
Today, we get to learn more about the Korea Law Center at UC California, Irvine. It's one of only three Korea Law Centers in the United States. It's also one of the most active research centers of its kind in the world that explores the intersection of us and Korean law and the two countries. Legal professions joining us are Professor Summer Kim, who heads the Center and is a member of the faculty of the School of Law. Professor Kim is the inaugural faculty director of the Center, and has served in that capacity since 2016 We are also joined by Center Program Director Grace Lee, who's played a major role not only with the Korea Law Center, but with the law school's global programs. Summer. Grace, so great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 1:17
It's great to be here with you, Austen, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to talk about the Korea Law Center.
Grace K. Lee 1:17
Thank you very much Austen.
Austen Parrish 1:18
It's great to have you both with us. Hey, let's just get straight to it. And summer, can you start telling our listeners a little bit about what is the Korea Law Center? When was it founded, and what is the center's mission and its goals?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 1:38
Sure. So the Korea Law Center was established in 2009 and it serves as a platform where students and legal scholars, judges, lawyers and policy makers from South Korea and the US come together to exchange ideas about the role of law in our society.
Austen Parrish 1:55
I've always been impressed about how many partnerships the Korea Law Center has. So what you say makes sense there. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the partnerships the center has, and what's the importance of those kinds of collaborations for the for the mission you just described?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 2:11
Sure, and Austen, you've been such an important part in establishing and also strengthening many of these partnerships. And as you say, there are so many partners that we would probably need two hours just to go through the list. But to highlight some of the most memorable I think it's important to recognize one of the first partners of the Korea Law Center, which is Korea University Law School, one of the oldest law schools in South Korea at the time, Professor Dean Lee was the Associate Dean of International Affairs today. He is the dean of that law school, but we had a chance to meet, and we just casually engaged in a conversation, talking about different things that we could do to connect our faculty and students and our communities. And it has been almost a decade since we first had that conversation, and I was thinking about it, just reflecting on it as I was preparing for this conversation, and I realized that we had accomplished everything that we had discussed at that meeting, and more, thanks to the support of administrators. Grace has been a huge part of us being able to materialize those visions. Another important partner for us is my alma mater of Seoul National University. We have a program with them that we launch every summer, and that is directed by our counterpart there, Professor Min Gyo Koo, who is one of our visiting scholars. We'll have a chance to talk more about our visiting scholars in a moment as well. But other partners just in recent memory that we had joint conferences with just in the last year, include the KoreaLlegislation Research Institute, the Korean Prosecutors Association, and OC KABA, which is the Orange County Korean American Bar Association.
Austen Parrish 3:55
Yeah, it's amazing how many partnerships you have for listeners who aren't familiar with Seoul and South Korea, how well known or what sort of quality are schools like Seoul, National University, Korea University, Yonsei, all the partners that you have are those well known schools?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 4:12
Yes, I would say that Korea, compared to the US, is a much smaller country, so we have a very competitive education system where there are only so many schools that so many students can go to in the country. And so the three schools that you just mentioned, Seoul National and Korea University and Yonsei, are referred to as the sky schools. I'm just taking the first letter of each of their names, and they're very well respected institutions in Korea, but I must say that much beyond those three schools, there are really great group of law schools that emerged after some of the legal education reforms that took place in the country to evolve the education system, to move beyond an undergraduate legal program to a graduate level. Legal Education Program, much like we have here in the US, I think that just elevated every law school in the country. So there are other schools that we have partnerships with, such as aju law school, that you're familiar with, which are outstanding institutions, and we're so lucky to be in partnership with all of them.
Austen Parrish 5:18
No, I think that's right. Hey, Grace, maybe I could turn to you, if we've talked about the partners, who are the people that make up the Korea Law Center. What's the community like?
Grace K. Lee 5:27
So we have such a wonderful community that make up Korea Law Center. In addition to Professor Summer Kim, we have several Korean American faculty at UCI Law including Professor Song, Richardson, Stephen Lee, Ji Seon Song and Bob Chang and the KLC staff includes myself and Mary Germain, who handles the logistics of the our visiting scholars coming to the US recently. Juli Ramirez has joined us to assist us on the programmatic side of KLC, and Aiden Kim, who is an attorney, a UCI Law alum who serves as an advisor. We also have about 25 to 35 visiting scholars from Korea throughout the year. And then we have a wonderful group of students every year, JD students who serve as research fellows. And then we have community members, lawyers, judges and friends that help us throughout the year with various support and coming to our events and collaborations. So we just have a really great group. We have a lot of fun together, and we do a lot of great things to really strengthen the ties between here and Korea.
Austen Parrish 6:38
Grace, maybe I could pick up on that. Can you describe some of the programs that you're most proud of? And if we're talking about fun, what's up next? What are what's on the agenda?
Grace K. Lee 6:48
It's really busy throughout the year. We have various events throughout the year. One of the programs that we're really proud of is our summer program with Seoul National University. So this summer will be the third year, and so we have 30 students from their Graduate School of Public Administration come and visit us here at UCI Law. Last summer, we had a wonderful exchange program with Korea University School of Law. Two of our students got to go to Korea and and take classes at KU law and do an internship. And then three of their students came here to UCI Law and participate in various internships and also classes some fun events. Every year we have a Chuseok celebration. Chuseok is a traditional Korean holiday celebrated by gathering with your family and so with so many of our visiting scholars visiting from Korea. We love having the opportunity for UCI law be their family away from their family here in the United States. But most recently, Korea Law Center had an opportunity with two of our colleagues here at the law school, Anna Davis and jasnar duo. We were invited by Seoul National University to speak at their public interest legal conference, but throughout the year, we will be hosting various events, including workshops, research, boot camps, family events, language cafes. We just had a wonderful language cafe last week and just some volunteering opportunities as well.
Austen Parrish 8:17
I respect anything done with coffee. I think recently, since we're just at the end of January, we just, we just had a group of KLC community members together for to celebrate the Lunar New Year as well, right? And that was tremendous.
Grace K. Lee 8:29
Yes, that was a wonderful celebration. And it was great to celebrate with a greater, greater community, the greater Irvine community, as well.
Austen Parrish 8:37
Summer you we've mentioned research fellows a few times. How many research fellows do you currently have? And maybe give us a sense of since the start of the center, how many research fellows the center has hosted, and what their contributions are like? Sure.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 8:51
So currently we have eight research fellows at the Korea Law Center. Semmi, Serapia, Allison, SJ, Annie, Thomas, YongSoo and Rachel and I have to say, as Grace emphasized earlier, it is a very close knit group, and we are very much in contact with not only our current research fellows, but our former research fellows as well. I think we haven't done a proper inventory, but there must be at least 20, and many of them are still living and working in the Orange County area and will come to many of our events. And so I think, as I think about our research fellows, the main word that comes to mind to describe their role is really one of co creation, many of the initiatives and programs that are in place today at the center that are the signature events of our center came from the ideas and efforts of our students, Sarah Choi, Tim you and Karen Shin were the three first fellows, research fellows at the Korea Law Center, and together, we partnered with the Council of Korean Americans to bring together a mentorship conference that was very ambitious. It was the first year that we had come together to start this thing. And it brought together more than 100 people, 100 mentors and mentees from not only law, but also medicine and business and engineering and science, and it was one of the events that really put us on the map and emphasized our shared values of community and service and also mentoring the next generation of Koreans and Korean Americans. I also am reminded of Sophie Paeng, who is an alum of UCI Law, she was very passionate, and she is very passionate about public interest law, and she saw that there was a gap between students who wanted to pursue public interest but felt some sort of obligation, whether it's familial or financial or otherwise, to pursue private sector jobs, and just how to navigate that balance and that tension. So to look further into that problem, she brought together some of the leading public interest Korean lawyers in the country and launched a forum that really brought to the surface the vulnerabilities as well as the accomplishments of these mentors and leaders in our community. Edward Joo is another recent graduate who launched the ESG forum, and this is just the beginning. Austen, every year, this year, this group of fellows, they've already been hard at work launching one of the biggest research thrusts in the Korea Law Center's history, which we'll hopefully have a chance to talk more about in a moment, but it's safe to say, without the research fellows, our center would not exist.
Austen Parrish 11:47
It's such a great story. I think that's not just less sort of the center, but more broadly, that our graduates, they're not only law students, but they're working hand in hand with our faculty and staff to build great things at the law school. And that's I think, that makes the school a little special, and it's certainly, it's certainly true with the Korea Law Center about the research fellows, how much they've done to create these programs, which is...
Grace K. Lee 12:09
Every year when it's time for the July bar exam, the Korea Law Center research fellows will get their hand me down notes the fellows who came the year before. And yeah, I can't tell you how much, even after they graduate, the fellows remain so deeply connected, even more in some ways, and it's one of the gifts, big, major gifts, that the Korea Law Center receives every year.
Austen Parrish 12:32
We've talked a little bit about the faculty and staff that comprise the center, and then we've also talked about the research fellows, the students that do this tremendous work. You also mentioned the visiting scholars program. What's that? Who are they and how many visitors does the center host in here?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 12:48
Our visiting scholars are mostly Law School faculty and judges and prosecutors, lawyers, and from time to time, also legal journalists. Each of them come to the center and to the law school for a semester to a year, in some case, a little bit longer than that. And they bring a wealth of expertise. Each of them are leaders in their respective fields. And just to plug one of the events that we have coming up next this Wednesday, January 29 I don't know. Will this podcast air before then Austen?
Austen Parrish 13:21
No, probably afterwards.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 13:24
So you'll see a recording of one of our visiting scholars, Judge Miyon Kim, talk about rights of workers in Korea, especially to the extent that they need greater access to infrastructure. This is just one of the many ways in which our visiting scholars contribute to our intellectual community, and also to all the fun and family values that grace mentioned earlier. I have to say, our visiting scholars program has really grown exponentially. The first year I was faculty director, we had three. Today, we have close to 30 at any given time at the Korea Law Center. And actually this is pretty similar to the story of the research fellows of very intrinsic and organic growth. If I think of those three visiting scholars that came in the first year, each of them remained still very closely connected to the center. And in particular, Professor Joohee Moon, who was a judge at the time, she was instrumental in helping us to enter into relationships and contracts and MOUs with the Supreme Court of Korea, which is one of the biggest sponsors of jurists who come to us as visiting scholars every year. And she actually did a second run. She came again to the Korea Law Center as a visiting scholar just recently, and I have to tell you, I think that is a great measure of our success. We have several visiting scholars who are repeat players, who come back every five or six years, and we welcome them with open arms, and it's been just a great component of our program where we get to enjoy the company as well as the intellectual wealth provided by these leading professionals who call UCI and Irvine California their home for the time that they are here and beyond.
Austen Parrish 15:14
I think there's a real advantage to being in Irvine. One of the things I note more broadly is how much the school has been supported by the broader Orange County legal community, and that seems certainly true for the center, Grace. Can you talk a little bit about it seems like Orange County is the perfect place for the Korea Law Center to be located. I assume you agree. But why is that? What are the advantages of being in Southern California for running the Korea Law Center?
Grace K. Lee 15:38
Absolutely, it's such a privilege for KLC to be in Orange County, Orange County and LA. we're just we're home to such a large and thriving Korean legal community. Being at the location is home to many Korean companies, as well as large international law firms. Korean American leaders are found in every level of leadership in these places, including our own UCI law alumni, and also through our close relationships with the Korean American Bar Association Orange County and Los Angeles, we regularly work together in CO hosting events and collaborating. There is a strong desire in the Korean American legal community to connect and interact with Korea and those who are visiting from Korea, and KLC is the PLC serves to facilitate these collaborations.
Austen Parrish 16:25
When I think those collaborations between business and public, community and law is so important, and it's nice to be being done on a global scale, I think that's it seems like the future of Southern California is attracting some of the world's best businesses here, and it's great that we're doing our small part to build that pipeline and bridges between us and Korea. Talking about that summer. Do we ever visit? I know the answer this question. Do you visit South Korea often? And what do those visits entail when you're there on center business?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 16:57
I guess the question is, how many times have you visited? I think it's Korea might be the country you visited most often since you became Dean here at UCI Law and Grace and I also made a recent trip. And Grace, together with Jasminder, as she mentioned earlier, made a very recent trip to Korea as well. So we are frequently in South Korea, and more often than us being there, we also are able to host delegations visiting from South Korea here at UCI law and it is pretty amazing how much we can get done when we meet in person. You could send each other 10 or even hundreds of emails and still really not get be able to get something done, but it's a short meeting where we have an alignment of vision. Can really plant the seed for things that would not otherwise be achievable. The Korea University Law student exchange program that grace mentioned earlier, where we had two of our students in Korea and three of their students here in Irvine, that was essentially, I think, Austen, you were writing in your notebook as we had Dean Lee visiting us, what can we do and how can we get it done? Okay, let's try a component where students can engage in internships and get mentorship, get a chance to do a writing sample, see what other lawyers, what their lives are like in their counterpart countries. And we made it happen. The very next year, it was a lot of work, but we made it happen. And as Greg said, being in Orange County, we have so many friends, we have so many businesses. We have in house counsel. We have judges. Judge Richard Lee, who is a dear friend of the Korea Law Center, who also teaches at the law school, was so generous and hosted three Korea University law students in his chambers for almost the entire duration of the program, and it's really been one of the most motivating things. Where we go to Korea, we host visitors who come from Korea, and we're just keeping our eyes and ears open to opportunities that can really help to bridge, serve as a bridge between our two countries, between our two communities, and there's been a lot of back and forth between that bridge, hopefully more to come.
Austen Parrish 19:08
As you say, I've been there several times, and I've always been impressed on how warm and welcoming everybody is. And and to go there for just a couple of days, and to meet with the Constitutional Court, the Ministry of Justice, the top law firms, three to five each time. Of the very best law schools and universities is really extraordinary. And then whenever we get there, we just have these great alumni receptions, which brings people together and they reflect, I think, on some of the fun they had. And I've also, I might ask you somewhere, I've also been pressed by how much support we receive from the Korean Consulate of Los Angeles, maybe you could talk about that, because they've helped us a little bit in our different interactions with all our partnerships over there.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 19:49
Yes, we have a long standing relationship with them. There's a legal attache at the consulate. It's usually a prosecutor who is sent to work in LA for a few years, and from the very beginning, since I was the Faculty Director, we've had a close relationship with the legal attache, who will visit us in Irvine. Just recently, we hosted a writing boot camp with some of our colleagues who oversee the UCI write program, which is just a one day intensive where you bring only your notebooks and a cup of coffee and get to writing. And that idea to invite our visiting scholars to that boot camp came about from our meeting with the current legal attache, which is prosecutor Shinyoung Park.
Austen Parrish 21:50
Summer, earlier, you mentioned a new project, a big project that the center had taken on. What is the Korea Lawyers in America project? And how does that work? How does that fit into the center's activities?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 22:01
So the Korean Lawyers in America project, which we also refer to as klap, it's a longitudinal study which combines survey data as well as in depth interviews to trace the career trajectories of legal professionals of Korean descent who either received their legal education in the US, or their license to practice law from the US. And the goals of the project are to gather data on Korean lawyers, presence and contributions in the US, legal markets across different sectors and regions and generations and gender identities, and then to also use this data to generate insights to analyze how Korean lawyers shape and are shaped by the US legal education system. We also want to use this project to recognize and celebrate the accomplishment of trailblazers and to inspire and support the next generation of Korean legal professionals.
Austen Parrish 22:58
Has anybody done a study like this before?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 23:03
We have seen many studies like this of different ethnic groups, but not of Korean lawyers, and so we're very excited to be able to launch the first study that takes this in depth, dive into the lives and careers of Korean and Korean American lawyers, and we feel very supported. We just received the grant from the law school to support this research. For us, we also have wonderful colleagues, Xi Lee and Bryant Garth and Swethaa Ballakrishnen, who are all experts in the field, who have engaged in studies that are really important benchmark studies for us, and so being able to get that support, not just in terms of funding, but in terms of also ideas, and having our students be the co-architects of this project, it's just been so exciting, And we're happy to be able to share more with you as we launch the survey this summer, this upcoming summer.
Austen Parrish 24:07
Grace, my memories that you and several of our students and staff were in Toronto to announce the start of the project. Is my memory right there. And why Toronto?
Grace K. Lee 24:17
You're correct. Toronto just happened to be the location where they're hosting the International Association of Korean lawyers conference, and so we thought IAKL would be the perfect forum to announce, KLAP, to launch our projects, because it's the one organization that's comprised of specifically Korean lawyers from all over the world, from All over the United States. So we had the opportunity to connect with Korean attorneys from all over from the East Coast to Seattle to Colorado, and it was really eye opening for our students to hear their experiences. And we're all Korean American attorneys, but the experiences from being in different regions. Of the United States are vastly different. And so I think for for us and for our students, it's it really is going to inform how they are going to go about with this research project. And that was the perfect place for us to launch project and really connect with attorneys that we wouldn't have a chance to connect here just in Southern California.
Austen Parrish 25:19
Talking about connecting. If someone listening wanted to get involved with the Korean lawyers in america project, how would they do it?
Grace K. Lee 25:27
So that would be me. So you would connect with me. Just reach out to me, and I would love to hear how you want to get involved with the project. And I'll take you to coffee.
Austen Parrish 25:39
Summer, speaking of getting involved. I know some of the Korea Law Center students, programs, scholarships and projects, and some of these programs have been supported philanthropically. How are gifts important for the Center's work, and how much do you rely on the philanthropy of the local community to do the important work that you're doing?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 25:55
The Korea Law Center is very generously and gratefully supported by gifts. And gifts come in all forms. They come in the form of money, but they also come in the form of time and ideas and friendship. And just to connect it to the conference that grace just mentioned, the International Association of Korean lawyers, conference that they had in Toronto, the reason that our students were able to attend, and not only attend but present at that conference, was because of the generous support of our donors so very many years ago, this was my first year when I just had joined the law school a group of women business and legal leaders. They were ... They established an endowed law scholarship at UCI Law to encourage the expansion of the Korea Law Center. And it was through that gift that we were able to support the students being able to present and launch theKLAP project in Toronto. And so it goes to show that all of these gifts, they really pay dividends across many years, across many generations. We hope, we hope that the CLAP project will be a project, a legacy project of the Korea Law Center. We are continuing to emphasize the longitudinal aspect to show that this is just year one of hopefully, what is many more years where we can return and revisit the lawyers that we've spoken to in year one, hopefully again in year 50. And we have so many exciting things going on at the center, none of which would be possible without the general gifts, generous gifts of our donors and friends, and for that, we're extremely grateful.
Austen Parrish 27:50
What an amazing opportunity for students, right? Not only do you get to do this research, but as you say, to be able to go to a major conference and be able to speak with leaders and see the pathways that that other attorneys have taken, it's got to be a great educational experience, separate apart from the value of the project itself.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 28:07
100% and they are so impressive. I think that is really the main takeaway, that when students have opportunities to be on the big stage, they will deliver. And so it is through gifts that we make those deliveries possible.
Austen Parrish 28:25
Yeah, I was just, I was just at a conference where somebody we're talking about law students these days, and it was of the kids these days kind of variety. And I have to say it's so opposite of what I interact with students on a day to day basis. And that's certainly true with the research fellows you have, they're so impressive. They're poised, they're energized. They're the fact that, I have to be honest, I don't think I would want to have presented it in my early 20s to a major international conference talking about a new research project, and the fact they did so with such so articulately and represented us so well. It's just impressive, and I think it shows that the next generation of lawyers are in good hands.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 29:03
I couldn't agree more.
Austen Parrish 29:06
Well, Summer, not only do you direct the Korea Law Center, you're also a faculty member here at the law school. Can you describe a little bit about what you teach and what your scholarship and research focuses on, and how long have you been with UC Irvine?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 1 29:18
yeah. So I guess I'll take the last question. First, I've been here 10 years already. I cannot believe it. I joined the law faculty in 2015 and UCI has just been the most amazing academic home for me. I teach business law classes, and I write about the ways in which our market structures and legal structures sometimes unintentionally create equities and gaps in our society, and how law and legal reform can sometimes bridge those gaps. Right now, I'm looking at the form of pay that we use. How do we reward our corporate executives, and is it really the most effective form of conference? I'm looking at whether extrinsic compensation, things like stock based pay, is really effective at motivating corporate executives and leaders to do what is right for the company and for its corporate stakeholders. And it's interesting to look at some of the social science research that shows that when you actually pay someone to do something. They might do it, but they do it with a sense of with a sense of obligation, rather than an innate and authentic desire to do the thing and to continue the thing and to make sure that it reaches its success. And so thinking about how we can marry those extrinsic motivators together with intrinsic motivation. That's some of the work that I'm looking at right now, and it really blends well with what we do at the Korea Law Center as well. I'm always thinking about how we can motivate our fellows, our scholars, myself, to do what is right and aligned with our mission. And it's really not through just rewards and recognitions, but it is that sense of community. It is that sense of fun and joy and enjoyment of one another that really brings us all together. And I think when I think about the research that I do, it really has a lot of its grounding in what I what we are doing here at the center as well.
Austen Parrish 31:22
Congrats on the upcoming 10th year anniversary with UC Irvine. Grace, how long have you been with the the university?
Grace K. Lee 31:29
I've been at UCI since 2013 in various capacities. So I've been here, yeah, since 2013 first with the Career Development Office, then with our community programs, and then with global programs, and now with Korea Law Center.
Austen Parrish 31:44
Congrats on your anniversary. Grace, we usually end with some advice for students or others. If students or community members wanted to become more connected with the Center's work, what do you what advice do you have for them?
Grace K. Lee 31:57
Just get involved. Do it! Give me a call, give me send me an email. I'd love to be able to sit down with you and talk about how you'd like to connect with us and your ideas, and also just to get you involved with Korea Law Center in our community, as Summer said, we have just a great group, and we're always We always enjoy each other's company, and we really, truly try to create a family away from your family, and I would love to hear from you and be able to connect and see how we can partner.
Austen Parrish 32:28
On the show notes, we'll include a link to the Korea Law Center's website, and people certainly can find that information by just typing in Korea Law Center at UCI if they wanted to reach you by email. What's the best email for you Grace?
Grace K. Lee 32:41
So my email is glee@law.uci.edu
Austen Parrish 32:48
That seems simple. Hey, Summer and Grace, it's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you for making the time and joining us on UCI Law Talks. Any last words about the Korea Law Center?
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim 32:58
I'll just say "gamsahabnida" which is thank you in Korea and happy new year.
Austen Parrish 33:03
Thanks so much. This has been another episode of UCI Law Talks.
Intro 33:11
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