How Much Is Appropriate Remuneration for Professional Guardians?... Research Findings and Symposium at YK on the 21st

Hosted by the Korea Guardianship Association
Held Both In-Person and Online

What criteria should determine the appropriate remuneration for professional guardians, such as attorneys, social workers, certified tax accountants, and accountants appointed by a family court to protect individuals who lack (or have insufficient) capacity to manage their affairs due to illness, disability, or old age—and how much should this remuneration be?

An event has been organized to present and discuss previous research findings on this issue.

On September 16, Law Firm YK (co-managing partners Kang Kyunghun and Kim Bumhan) announced that it will hold a “Report and Symposium on the Standardization of Remuneration Structure for Professional Guardians and Guidelines for Remuneration Claims” at 2:00 p.m. on September 21 in the main conference room at the YK Gangnam Office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

This event, hosted by the Korea Guardianship Association (President Eunsoo Park), will be organized by the Decision Support Research Institute affiliated with the Korea Guardianship Association (Director Yoonjung Kim, Partner Attorney at Law Firm YK) and sponsored by Law Firm YK.

The opening ceremony will begin with an address by Eunsoo Park, President of the Korea Guardianship Association, followed by a welcome speech from Yoonjung Kim, Director of the Decision Support Research Institute, and congratulatory remarks from Kyunghun Kang, Managing Partner at Law Firm YK.

In the first session, Attorney Baekwang Ryeol of ONYUL, who has served as a professional guardian since 2016, will present on “Issues and Need for Standardization in the Remuneration Structure of Professional Guardians.” This will be followed by a presentation from social worker Jinsu Han discussing “The System of Remuneration for Professional Guardians in Japan.”

For the second session’s panel discussion, the participants will include Professor Inhwan Park of Inha University Law School; attorney Jungik Oh from Law Firm Won; Joonki Park, President of the Korea Guardianship Social Welfare Association (social worker); and Chunghui Lee, Secretary-General of the Korea Adult Guardianship Support Center (judicial scrivener). After the panel discussion, the audience will have an opportunity for a Q&A session.

This symposium, targeting professionals and those interested in guardianship and decision support systems, will be held both offline and online, and is open for anyone to attend free of charge.

Yoonjung Kim, Director of the Decision-Making Support Research Institute affiliated with the Korea Guardianship Association and Partner Lawyer at YK Law Firm. YK Law Firm

The professional guardian system is designed for situations where there are no family members available for appointment as a guardian for someone in need, or when it is difficult to appoint a specific family member due to a potential conflict of interest. In such cases, the court appoints a third party with professional expertise as guardian.

Guardians manage the ward’s property, represent or consent to legal acts, and, when necessary, support and make decisions regarding the ward’s personal matters, including healthcare, residence, and welfare.

In April of this year, the Korea Guardianship Association established the Decision Support Research Institute and appointed as its first director Yoonjung Kim, a partner attorney at Law Firm YK and former judge specializing in family and juvenile cases (formerly a judge at Seoul High Court). During her judicial career, Kim served as a judge specializing in family and juvenile law at the Seoul Family Court, and in 2016, while working as a judicial research fellow at the Judicial Policy Research Institute, she also participated in research for the reform of the adult guardianship system and other family law and judicial policy studies.

Law Firm YK donated the entire budget for this research, which was carried out as a first key project of the Decision Support Research Institute to “standardize the remuneration structure and draft guidelines for professional guardians.”

Yoonjung Kim, Director of the Decision Support Research Institute, stated, “There has been no clear standard for remuneration, resulting in significant discrepancies from case to case and a lack of predictability for both wards and guardians. To address this, we developed standardized remuneration structures and practical claim guidelines based on empirical analysis,” she said. “By collecting feedback from the field during this symposium, we hope to further refine these standards, and expect this work to contribute to better protection of the rights of wards and greater trust in the guardianship system.”

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