White & Case has hired a local partner – equivalent to counsel – in Seoul after losing three of its four partners in the past year.

Won Sun Jung previously worked in an in-house role, the firm said. She specialises in mergers and acquisitions as well as capital markets transactions. Earlier in her career, she was an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York and Hong Kong until 2010.

A spokesperson for White & Case declined to provide details about Jung's in-house experience, including the name of the company.*

The appointment is White & Case's latest effort to rebuild its Seoul office, after a three-partner departure to Arnold & Porter. The first of the three was disputes specialist James Lee, who helped launch White & Case's Seoul office in 2015 and served as its executive partner. Lee left last December to launch a Seoul office for Arnold & Porter and was succeeded by international arbitration partner Jun Hee Kim as White & Case's Seoul office executive partner. A few months later, Kim also left to join Lee at Arnold & Porter. Asset finance specialist Ji Hoon Hong, White & Case's sole Seoul partner, took over as office executive partner. In March, the third partner, corporate lawyer Kyungseok Kim, also left White & Case for Arnold & Porter.

Arnold & Porter's three-partner hire was significant in the South Korean legal market, where most international firms have a small outpost with one or two partners. Lee told Law.com International in October that "in order to be strong [in Korea], you need to be committed to the market".

Meanwhile, White & Case now has seven lawyers in its Seoul office, according to its website, including local partner Jung and sole partner Hong. The only other senior lawyer the firm has hired in Seoul since the departures is Sarah Park, who joined as a project finance counsel in February from Shearman & Sterling's Singapore office.

*Updated Nov. 20: This article has been updated to clarify that a spokesperson for White & Case declined to provide details about Jung's in-house experience. The third paragraph of this article has been modified to reflect that.

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