Yingke Law Firm sign

China's Yingke Law Firm, the second-largest firm in the world, has expanded into South Korea.

The Chinese firm received approval from the South Korean Ministry of Justice on Friday to open a foreign legal consultant office in Seoul, according to official records. The office's representative is partner Cuiying Zhu, a Chinese-qualified lawyer who received approval from the Ministry of Justice to be a foreign legal consultant in Seoul last month. Zhu, who previously worked at leading Korean firm Lee & Ko's Beijing office, specialises in Korean investments and intellectual property.

The Seoul office is the latest in Yingke's expansion drive. In September, the firm established a U.S. firm, YK Law, which recently recruited four former lawyers from the U.S. firm CKR Law. Li Yongyuan, a partner at Yingke and head of its China-U.S. cross-border practice team, told Law.com that YK Law will have about 10-15 partners by the end of 2020. Yingke and CKR previously planned to form a joint venture firm in the U.S., but the plan was abandoned in September.

Yingke reported 7,572 lawyers in 2018 – all based in China – making it the second-largest firm in the world after Dentons. By gross revenue, Yingke is ranked 78th in the 2019 Global 100, up from 97th last year, with $624 million – a 40% increase from the previous year.

Yingke is just the second Chinese firm to open an office in Seoul. The first was Lifang & Partners, an intellectual property specialist firm based in Beijing, which opened its first – and still only –  overseas office in the South Korean capital last year.

With the addition of Yingke, there are now 29 foreign firms in Seoul. Dentons is currently preparing to close its Seoul office after it completes its combination with midsized local firm Lee International, which it announced in August.

In the past 12 months, two global firms have exited South Korea while another two opened there. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and McDermott Will & Emery were the first two global firms to shutter their Seoul operations, while Shearman & Sterling and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer opened their own offices.

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