Yoon & Yang continues to strengthen its cross-border capabilities with the hire of two Senior Foreign Attorneys from Lee & Ko and Samsung Electronics.
Yoon & Yang announced that Elayne Heeseung Sung and Irene Y. Kim have joined the firm’s Seoul office as Senior Foreign Attorneys.
Elayne is a U.S.-qualified attorney who joins Yoon & Yang from Lee & Ko where she concentrated her practice in shipping finance from 2001 to 2022. She is expected to bring to Yoon & Yang decades of transactional experience advising on cross-border transactions with a focus on lease and transportation finance. During her 21 years at Lee & Ko, she has advised major financial institutions and Korean shipping companies on a broad range of transactions, including syndicated and bilateral credit facilities, sale and leasebacks, cross-border leases, off-shore financing and export-credit agency supported facilities.
Her notable experience spans advising on cross-border tax leases, rehabilitation proceedings of Korean shipping companies, financing of new container boxes under KOBC container box lease program, JOLCO for a car carrier, newbuilding projects and advising Korean ECAs and Korean ECA covered lenders on restructuring of offshore drilling companies. Elayne looks forward to developing a strong Transportation financing team at Yoon & Yang with H. K. Helen Sohn, a leading aviation finance expert who also joined Yoon & Yang as a partner from Lee & Ko last year.
Irene is a U.S.-qualified attorney with multi-faceted, cross-border experience from both U.S. and Korea. She is a trusted advisor to leading multinational companies, private equity funds, and financial institutions in M&A and corporate transactions. Irene advises across a variety of industries, with a particular emphasis on semiconductor, big tech, and financial industries.
Irene has re-joined Yoon & Yang from Samsung Electronics, where she advised the chipmaker on its high-stakes transactions with big tech, automotive companies, and global suppliers. Prior to her tenure at Samsung Electronics, she was formerly a foreign attorney at Yoon & Yang from 2016 to 2021, where she advised global and Korean companies on a broad range of M&A and corporate transactions. Before entering private practice, she served as General Attorney at Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Office of Chief Counsel, Large Business & International, where she represented the IRS on high-profile investigations and trials surrounding multinational companies and financial institutions in connection with their M&A, global restructuring, and investments.
Yoon & Yang has been working hard to significantly expand its cross-border capabilities. In March, the firm announced the addition of three senior foreign attorneys: Jason W. Lee (U.S.-qualified) from Kim & Chang, Sung Jin Ro (U.S.-qualified) from Versum Materials Korea and Song Feng Hong (China-qualified) from Bae, Kim & Lee. Yoon & Yang also hired H. K. Helen Sohn, a veteran aviation lawyer from Lee & Ko last year. Yoon & Yang is dedicated to providing innovative legal services for its clients in the areas of corporate/M&A, joint ventures, private equity, and foreign direct investments with expert professionals in Yoon & Yang’s Seoul headquarters as well as its overseas offices.
Jinsu Jeong, Managing Partner at Yoon & Yang, commenting on the latest recruitment, said: “The recruitment of Elayne and Irene bolsters our top-tier corporate advisory service for our clients doing business internationally. I believe that Elayne and Irene’s high-calibre corporate and finance practice would complement our strong cross-border capabilities. With the addition of Elayne and Irene, our position as a premier international law firm offering advice on the full spectrum of cross-border works across the region would continue to be strengthened.”
Yoon & Yang is one of the leading law firms in South Korea, providing the highest quality legal services across a broad range of practice areas including mergers & acquisitions, international transactions, tax, employment, IP and all areas of disputes. It has offices in Seoul, Tashkent, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and Jakarta.