Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and McDermott Will & Emery are among a four firm line-up set to receive licences to launch in South Korea tomorrow (26 September), as the country pushes ahead with opening its legal market to international firms.

Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker and Squire Sanders will also receive approval on Wednesday to establish Foreign Legal Consultant Offices in Seoul, according to the local Ministry of Justice (MOJ).

The approval will take the number of firms authorised to open in the country to nine, with New York leader Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and US boutique Cohen & Gresser planning to open next month after receiving approval over the summer. Ropes & Gray, Sheppard Mullin and Clifford Chance were the first to set up bases in the region.

To date, as many as 16 firms have applied to work in Asia's fourth-largest economy, seven of which are still being considered.

Those who have submitted an application include DLA, Herbert Smith and O'Melveny & Myers, with Ashurst, Bird & Bird and Eversheds among those expressing an interest but not yet applying.

"We remain very interested in the Korean market," said Nick Seddon, Asia managing partner for Eversheds. "We are regular visitors to Seoul and we continue to service Korean clients from outside. The economic statistics make it a very important market. Also, many Korean companies are household names around the world, which is not necessarily the case in markets like Indonesia."

Ashurst's managing partner for Asia, Geoffrey Green, said his firm is currently putting together a four-lawyer team to staff a representative office in the Korean capital in the near future.

The team will be led by one partner, and will focus on outbound work from Korean clients into Australia and India.

"Korea is important because it is a developed market with sophisticated users," he said. "These users will be significant because they are continuing to spend money outside of the domestic market."

The opening up of South Korea's legal market to foreign firms followed the ratification of a free trade agreement (FTA) with Europe, by the European Parliament in February last year.

The long-awaited FTA, which was initially signed at the EU-South Korea summit in Brussels in October 2010, set out a timescale for foreign law firms to open offices and work in the country.

Together with the legislation set out by the South Korean Government, it said liberalisation would be rolled out in three stages.

From July 2011, when the agreement was first ratified, EU-based law firms have been allowed to open representative offices in South Korea and to advise on non-Korean law.

The second stage will run from July 2013, when firms will also be able to enter into co-operative agreements with Korean firms and advise on legal issues involving a mixture of domestic and foreign law.

As of July 2016, liberalisation will enter its third and final stage, permitting EU firms to invest in local firms and to recruit Korean lawyers.