Much of Korean financial regulation has no English text at all, and a good deal of what does exist is years out of date. Our published catalogue closes part of that gap. This page is for the rest — the regulation we have not reached yet, and the Korean document that was never going to be published at all: a contract, a board minute, a letter from a supervisor, an exhibit.
What we translate
Regulatory material
- Regulations, and the 고시 and 지침 (public notices and guidelines) beneath them, that the official English databases have never covered or have not updated since an amendment
- Supervisory correspondence, examination findings, licence conditions and regulator questionnaires
- Internal policies, compliance manuals and control standards a Korean subsidiary or branch must put in front of its overseas head office, and the reverse
Legal and transactional documents
- Contracts and agreements governed by Korean law — share purchase and investment agreements, shareholders’ and joint venture agreements, loan and security documents, distribution, licensing, outsourcing and employment contracts, and their side letters and amendments
- Corporate and governance records — articles of incorporation, board and shareholder minutes, powers of attorney, corporate registry extracts and certificates
- Disclosure and offering material — prospectuses, circulars, and the Korean regulatory filings that sit behind an offering
- Documents for proceedings — pleadings, evidence and exhibits for litigation or arbitration, and Korean material a foreign regulator or court has asked to see
A contract is translated with the same discipline as a regulation: in full, with the defined terms held consistent throughout. Where a document is to be signed or filed in both languages, tell us at the outset — preparing a text for execution is a separate engagement and we will scope it as one.
Who commissions it
- Foreign financial institutions and their Seoul branches and subsidiaries
- In-house legal, compliance and risk teams with Korean exposure but no Korean reader
- Foreign law firms that need a reliable Korean text rendered for their own advice
- Asset managers, custodians, private equity funds, exchanges and market infrastructure
What you get
One service, produced by the same process that stands behind our published editions. We do not offer it without the lawyer in it, because that is the part that makes it worth commissioning from a law office rather than an agency.
- Full translation — nothing abridged or summarised
- Consistent legal terminology — aligned to the governing statute where there is one, and to the document’s own defined terms where there is not
- Tables, forms and annexes reproduced; figures and diagrams redrawn as tables so their content is carried over in readable form — and where a figure cannot be reproduced faithfully we say so rather than approximate it
- Lawyer review of the English against the Korean, provision by provision
- A terminology note recording the choices made and why, so your counsel can see the reasoning rather than take it on trust
- Material ambiguities and internal inconsistencies in the Korean identified and flagged rather than quietly resolved; obvious clerical errors corrected and listed
- A certificate of accuracy on the firm’s letterhead where you need one. Whether a particular authority or counterparty accepts it is a matter for them, and we will say plainly if we think it will not be enough
- Delivered as a typeset PDF and an editable file
What it costs
What a typical engagement comes to. Indicative only — the fee for your document is agreed in writing before any work begins.
| Example | Fee |
|---|---|
| A 15-page contract or set of board minutes | US$1,300 (minimum) |
| A 50-page regulation or agreement, mostly running text | US$2,400 |
| A 150-page manual, mostly running text | US$7,200 |
A page means one A4 page of the Korean source as published. Where the source is not A4, or comes in a format with no fixed pagination, we convert to A4-equivalent pages and tell you the figure we have used before you agree the fee. Documents that are mostly tables, forms or scanned images, and originals supplied only in 한/글 (HWP) format take longer and are quoted higher than the examples above, as are documents on a compressed timetable. A short document still carries the minimum engagement fee, because the verification work does not scale down with length, and anything substantially longer than the examples is quoted individually. We quote and invoice in US dollars, and can invoice in Korean won on request. Fees are exclusive of Korean VAT, which is added where it applies.
How we work
- You describe the document. A title, an issuing body and a page count are enough for an indicative quote; you do not need to send the document itself yet. We come back with the scope and an indicative fee in writing; a fixed fee follows once we have seen the document.
- Conflicts check, engagement letter, and an NDA if you want one. For a contract, a transaction or anything contentious we will need the names of the parties so we can run a conflicts check before accepting the engagement. What you send us is covered by a Korean lawyer’s duty of confidentiality from the outset; if you would also like an NDA signed before anything else, say so.
- Translation and verification. The Korean source text is extracted and verified character by character against the original where the format allows it, and read off the source page images where it does not. The English is then checked back against that verified Korean, provision by provision, and figures and tables are reconciled against the totals the document itself prints.
- Review and delivery. A lawyer reviews the English against the Korean, and you receive the text as a typeset PDF and an editable file, with the terminology note and, where you have asked for one, the certificate of accuracy.
How the work is produced
Our English editions are prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence and are then reviewed by H&S Partners. Every edition we have translated ourselves since September 2026, when we adopted the practice, says so on its own face, and we say so here, because you are entitled to know how the work you are paying for is made.
AI assistance is what makes this speed and this price possible. It does not remove the possibility of error, which is why the verification and the lawyer review exist, and why they are the parts we do not compress. If your matter calls for a different arrangement, tell us at the outset and we will say plainly whether we can meet it.
You can judge the result before you commission any of it: more than forty English editions are published free at kfrgateway.com, produced the same way. That record is regulatory; transactional and contentious work goes through the same process but is not published.
Request a quote
Tell us what you need translated. We reply with a scope, a fee and an indicative timetable.
Thank you — your enquiry is with us
A lawyer at H&S Partners will read it and reply personally from christie.park@hyunseul.com, usually within one business day, with a scope and a fee.
In the meantime, our English editions are free from the publications library.
H&S Partners (현앤설 법률사무소) is a law office licensed in the Republic of Korea. Its firm website is at www.hyunseul.com/eng. KFR Gateway is its English-language publishing project.
The fees on this page are indicative and are given so that you can judge whether to make an enquiry. They are not an offer. The fee for a particular document depends on its length, its format and its complexity, and is agreed in an engagement letter before any work begins.
Sending an enquiry does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and nothing on this page is legal advice. A translation is a translation: it tells you what the Korean says, not what it means for your business. Where you need the second, say so and we will scope it as a separate advisory engagement.
Where a Korean original and an English translation differ, the Korean original governs. That is true of a commissioned translation as it is of everything we publish.