KOREA COVERAGE

The Korean public record:
what is obtainable, and what is not

There is no consolidated English-language database of Korean companies.
Establishing which fields can be filled, and which will stay empty for jurisdictional reasons, is half of this work.

WHY KOREA IS HARD

Korea is one of the harder markets
for a global diligence firm to cover.

Not because records are scarce.
They sit with different institutions and exist only in Korean.
And corporate risk diligence has never established itself here as an independent line of work.

01   THE RECORDS
Held in different places

Regulatory filings sit with the Financial Supervisory Service, corporate and property registries with the courts, insolvency notices in the official gazette. There is no consolidated English-language source, and most of what matters is written in Korean, inside the notes and the registry.

02   THE CATEGORY
Almost no independent firms

The work is done almost entirely inside the largest law and accounting firms. They do not take outside instructions and are built around domestic clients. Foreign firms are left either dropping Korea or covering it with a general search.

ALREADY IN PLACE

We act as a vendor to global consultancies with offices in Asia.
We deliver in their report format, to their turnaround, and under their onboarding requirements.

WHAT THE RECORD CAN AND CANNOT SHOW

Availability, field by field

AVAILABLE
  • Corporate registry: representative and officers, capital, business purpose, relocation history, dissolution and liquidation
  • Audited financial statements and full notes for filing entities
  • Shareholders of listed companies and of private companies under statutory audit
  • Bankruptcy and rehabilitation, through the registry and the official gazette
  • International sanctions and watchlists, and Korean financial and fair-trade penalty lists
  • Korean-language adverse media
NOT AVAILABLE
  • Litigation history on an individual. There is no search by party name, so a case number is required
  • Shareholder registers. These are not public documents in Korea
  • Ownership of smaller private companies that fall outside statutory audit
  • Court judgments. Access is restricted
  • Any single consolidated English-language source. None exists
HOW THE GAPS ARE COVERED

Alternative routes

01
Korean-language media, read in full

Domestic reporting that an English search does not return, read in the original. Matters that fall outside the disclosure regime often surface here.

02
The counterparty's books

Every transaction is recorded on both sides. What is missing from one company's notes usually remains in the other company's audited statements. Most decisive findings come from here.

03
Registry and filings on one timeline

Corporate registry, property registry and regulatory filings placed on a single timeline. A sequence that looks ordinary in any one document becomes visible here.

SCOPING

Scoping

Availability is confirmed before the scope is fixed.

01
Subject list received

Korean company names or registration numbers for entities, and dates of birth for individuals, make a material difference to accuracy. Common surnames are widespread in Korea and a name alone is rarely enough to identify a subject.

02
Availability returned per field

We confirm, subject by subject, which fields can be populated and which will stay empty for jurisdictional reasons, with any alternative route noted.

03
Scope and turnaround fixed

Level and priority are agreed. Delivery can run in sequence, highest priority first.