About the Korea Summer Program

141 students attended the 2012 Summer Institute. In its first seven years, the Institute enrolled over 1000 students from 5 countries and 60 law schools, including students from the law schools at American University, Boston College, Boston University, Chicago-Kent, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, George Washington, Hastings, Illinois, Loyola-LA, McGill, NYU, Texas, Tulane, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and University of San Diego.

The Summer Institute is designed for J.D. and LL.M. students in the United States, as well as for law students, lawyers, and government officials from around the world. The professors of the 2013 Institute are prominent tenured or tenure-track faculty from Fordham Law School. English is the language of instruction, but the faculty includes members who are also fluent or proficient in Italian, French, German, and Korean.

Classes are held in the new Law School building which is located on the downtown Seoul campus of Sungkyunkwan University, the oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Asia and one of the top-five law schools in Korea. Outside of class, the program features field trips and social events to enable students to experience Korean legal institutions and culture.

Institute students may enroll in one of the following three intensive three credit-hour courses in international and comparative law subjects:

Law of International Institutions

Paolo Galizzi, Institute Director, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

Comparative Corporate Law

Martin Gelter, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

International and Comparative Intellectual Property Law

Ron Lazebnik, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

All classes qualify for three academic semester credit hours toward the J.D. or LL.M. degrees at Fordham and should be recognized by most other J.D. programs in the United States. The Summer Institute courses are a part of the Fordham Law School curriculum and have been approved by the American Bar Association.  Non-Fordham students should check with their law school Registrar to confirm the transfer of credit.

In addition, there will be a basic Korean language and culture class for non-Korean speakers that will meet for eight forty-minute class sessions and additional field trips during the program. The class is not for credit and open to all program students. However, the content of this class is primarily for those students with no exposure to Korean language and culture.

• Introduction to Korean Language and Culture
  Leighanne Yuh, Executive Director, B.A. Wellesley, A.M. Columbia, Ph.D. in Korean History at UCLA.

After the conclusion of the Summer Institute's academic program, the Institute will place U.S. and Canadian participants who would like to stay in Korea in 5-week internships at the Korean supreme and constitutional courts, Korean government ministries, the Korean National Assembly, multi-national corporations, human rights organizations, and law firms.

Students may choose to:

• receive three ungraded academic credits for internships at a tuition rate of $2,100 (with $500 payable at the time of application);
• or receive no academic credit for the internship upon payment of an internship placement fee of $500. Students opting for academic credits will have priority in internship placements and program housing over non-credit internship applicants.

The Institute will negotiate and advocate placements with internship sponsors, who will make final selections in a competitive process based on transcripts, resumes, and possibly telephone interviews. Every effort will be made to place students in their desired internships, but there are no guarantees. Students should be aware that there may be substantial differences in the work and culture they will experience during the internship.  All work will be conducted in English unless otherwise stated.

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