KoreanLII

KoreanLII (pronounced "Korean L two" because "KoreanLI" is usually mistaken for the Korean Re, a reinsurance corporation in Korea), or Korean Legal Information Institute, which started on Sept. 28, 2011, is a legal information institute committed to the "Free Access to Law" movement in South Korea. KoreanLII is established based upon Collective Intelligence like Wikipedia and JurisPedia. Accordingly participant's contribution will increase its content in the making.

Initially KoreanLII (blog) started as an individual project of Prof. Whon-il Park at Kyung Hee University Law School in Seoul after he made a presentation at the "Law via the Internet" Conference held by the University of Hong Kong (HKLII) in June 2011. 2012 Law via the Internet Conference is held by Cornell Law School at Ithaca, New York, in October 2012, which celebrates its 20th anniversary.

As KoreanLII, which is currently run by the Kyung Hee Institute of Legal Studies, is accumulating more and more articles, someday in the near future a responsive institution is supposed to take over the assignment to make anyone in the world have free access to Korean legal resources.

In 2010, the Korean Bar Association (KBA) proposed a bill to the National Assembly to establish the KBA LII for the collection of all the judiciary decisions including the lower court rulings. KoreanLII, which is neutral and independent in nature, is different from the the said KBA LII.

Key words
legal information institute (LII), free access to law, legal sources, legal regime, collective intelligence

3 Aspects of LII
First, KoreanLII brings together legal resources from the Administration (in particular, the Ministry of Government Legislation), the National Assembly, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, and adds significant value to these primary legal materials.

Second, KoreanLII makes this value-added legal information available for free access by anybody around the world. KoreanLII does something extra with that official legal information in the same manner as such other legal information institutes as LII (Cornell), AustLII, AsianLII, CanLII, etc. Just like Wikipedia, KoreanLII is subject to the terms of "Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike". Although KoreanLII is not for profit, it is in need of contributions enough to keep it sustainable.

Third, KoreanLII is willing to join the "Free Access to Law Movement" (FALM) as soon as it takes an organizational shape, and adheres to the Declaration on Free Access to Law (2002, as amended).

Topics or Issues
KoreanLII covers all spectrum of the Korean legal regime from the constitutional law and civil law to privacy law, and even to the unification law of Korea. All the articles is requested to be written like a module enabling self-learning so that it can be assembled with other articles to make a different dimension of writing - academic paper, thesis, or even a novel. These contents will be shown by key word or relevant directory.

Purpose of KoreanLII
In line with the "Free Access to Law Movement" (FALM) and on the basis of Wikipedia-like principles, this KoreanLII has been established for the purpose:
 * 1) To give a big picture as regards the Korean legal regime;
 * 2) To explain key words and topics in which foreign lawyers are interested;
 * 3) To conduct a pump-priming function to induce collective intelligence to expand and improve KoreanLII; and
 * 4) To explore new technologies that make it easier for people to find the Korean law.

Sustainability of KoreanLII
As with the case of other Legal Information Institutes, KoreanLII faced the "Sustainability" issue from the start, and is making efforts to survive by:
 * 1) Identifying target readers;
 * 2) Building up organisational capacity, though not successful so far;
 * 3) Having academic backgrounds;
 * 4) Securing funding sources (at present, only individual donations); and
 * 5) Keeping abreast with advanced IT technologies.

Disclaimer
The information regarding Korean law contained in this website is provided by a number of voluntary contributors based upon collective intelligence for general information purposes only.

While the contributors as well as editors of KoreanLII endeavour to keep the information up to date and correct to our best knowledge, these collaborators make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose.

Any reliance the reader places on such information is therefore strictly at his/her own risk. So the reader is requested to consult professional lawyers on the legal affairs of grave importance.

Through this website, the reader is able to link to other websites which are not under the control of KoreanLII. The operator has no control over the nature, content and availability of those sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.

Every effort is made to keep the website up and running smoothly. However, KoreanLII takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical issues beyond the control of the operator.