General Partners & fund sponsors
A Korean pension, insurer or securities firm wants to commit, and the distributor tells you a local agent and an FSS registration are required. You have a closing date and no one on the team has filed in Korea.
FSS registration for foreign funds
Selling your fundto Korean institutionsstarts with an FSS filing.We handle it end to end.
Document checklist on day one. Pre-review with the FSS officer before notarization is even finished. Weekly status reports until the registration is done.
Led by Youngjo Jung, a former senior examiner at the Financial Supervisory Service, with Leviathan Law Office as your attorney of record.
Why the timeline matters
The FSS review is the long polein your Korean closing.
A foreign private fund cannot be offered to Korean investors until the Financial Supervisory Service registers it under Article 279 of the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act. In our experience the review takes three to five months and depends heavily on the officer's caseload. If your Korean anchor investor has a closing date, the filing has to start now, not after the documents are perfect.
- 01Kick-off & checklist
- 02Documents & translation
- 03Unnotarized filing
- 04Notarized supplement
- 05FSS queries & registration
Who this is for
Three teams end up on this page.
Investment advisers & management companies
You are the licensed entity in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong or the US. The FSS will ask for your license evidence, track record and confirmation letters, and you need someone who knows what actually satisfies the officer.
Placement agents & Korean distributors
You have introduced a foreign GP to Korean LPs and need a counsel who will chase the GP's documents, manage the FSS timeline and keep you copied on every step.
How it works
Four stages.One point of contact.
Typical total: three to five months from kick-off. We tell you what we see in the officer's queue every week rather than promising a date.
- Week 1
Scoping
Fund structure and related-party map, decision on which vehicles must be registered (parallel funds usually do not), and a 26-item document checklist tailored to your structure.
- Weeks 2–5
Documents
Templates for the no-penalty and no-suspension confirmation letters, wording review for each related party, English translations of the application and pre-checklist for GP signature, Korean translations of the PPM, LPA and fee agreements.
- Weeks 5–9
Filing & notarization
We file the unnotarized set first and open the conversation with the FSS officer while the GP completes a single batch notarization and apostille. Notarized originals follow as a supplement.
- Weeks 9+
Review & registration
Weekly follow-up with the officer, written answers to every query with page references to the PPM and LPA, supplementary documents, and confirmation of registration. Timing in this stage depends on the FSS.
What we handle
Everything between your fund documentsand a registered fund.
Registration scoping
Which entities and vehicles need to be registered, which exemptions apply for professional-investor-only offerings, and what the officer is likely to ask for.
Document preparation
Checklist management, confirmation letter templates, wording for GPs whose service provider is also the adviser's parent, and a single-batch notarization statement so twelve documents are notarized in one sitting.
Translation
English versions of the FSS application and pre-checklist for the GP to sign, and Korean translations of the PPM, LPA, registry extracts and fee agreements with page mapping for the officer.
Filing
Application, summary of key terms, and pre-checklist prepared and filed under a power of attorney, unnotarized first and notarized as a supplement.
FSS communication
Pre-review request, weekly status calls, and written answers to review queries. You receive a status update after every contact.
Distributor coordination
Sub-placement agreements, seal and signature collection from the Korean distributor, and alignment of the distributor's closing timeline with the review.
After registration
Sales reports, investor notifications, amendment filings for changes in registered information, and annual registration tax.
Who you will work with
A former FSS examiner who reads the file first,and a lawyer who signs the power of attorney.
Former Senior Examiner, Financial Supervisory Service of KoreaTalk to Youngjo Jung
Youngjo JungDirector, Strategy & Regulatory Affairs
He used to examine financial institutions for the FSS. Now he reads your filing the way the officer will.
Youngjo Jung spent his career at the Financial Supervisory Service as a senior examiner in banking supervision, where he reviewed and revised lending regulations such as LTV and DSR limits and examined financial institutions' internal controls against mis-selling under the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act and the Financial Consumer Protection Act. He handled the FSS's agreements and correspondence with IOSCO and IAIS, supported the IMF and AMRO annual consultations, and trained in insurance supervision at Germany's BaFin. Before the FSS he assessed contract, defect and advance-payment guarantees at the Korea Specialty Contractors Financial Cooperative. He holds a degree in International Studies from Korea University and now leads strategy and regulatory affairs at Leviathan Law Office, bringing the supervisor's reading of a file to the applicant's side of the table.
Career
Senior Examiner, Financial Supervisory Service (banking & capital markets supervision, consumer protection, international organizations) · Korea Specialty Contractors Financial Cooperative (guarantee & loan underwriting)
Education
Korea University, International Studies
Languages
Korean · English
Managing Partner · Attorney at Law (Korea)Talk to Hyunseo Lim
Hyunseo LimManaging Partner
Regulatory filings and cross-border fund matters, handled by a lawyer who has run businesses himself.
Hyunseo Lim is the managing partner of Leviathan Law Office. He has advised on asset-backed securitization registrations, a Singapore-affiliated asset manager's logistics warehouse acquisition and PFV structuring, and capital-markets-act disputes involving investment advisers, and he has represented multinational clients from Hong Kong, India, the UK, the US, Norway and the Netherlands in Korea. Before practising law he founded and ran an operating company for eight years and led an AI-based real-estate underwriting project for financial institutions, for which he received commendations from two Korean ministries.
Education
Seoul National University School of Law (J.D.) · Seoul National University, B.B.A.
Career
Managing Partner, Chowol Law (2024–2025) · CEO, Tanker Co. and affiliates (2015–2023)
Qualifications
Attorney at Law (Korea) · Licensed Real Estate Agent · Korean, English, Chinese
Structures we register
Any domicile, any manager.The FSS asks the same questions.
We register Cayman exempted limited partnerships, Delaware LPs, Luxembourg RAIFs and SICAVs, Irish ICAVs, Singapore VCCs, and Japanese and Hong Kong vehicles. Buyout, growth, credit, infrastructure, real estate and fund-of-funds strategies all follow the same registration route. What changes is the evidence. Which regulator licenses the adviser, whether an affiliate operates under a notification regime rather than a license, how the fund's formation is proved in its own jurisdiction, and which certificates a foreign notary and that country's apostille authority will actually issue. We map that for your structure in the first week and tell you which vehicles have to be registered at all.
26document items on the FSS checklist
12documents that need notarization and apostille
6related parties typically covered
3–5months for a typical registration
Requirements and timing vary with each fund's structure, the jurisdictions involved and the FSS caseload at the time. Nothing above describes an individual client matter.
If you know what the examiner reads first, you prepare the file in that order.
Youngjo Jung, Director
Questions we hear first
Before you ask your fund counsel,ask us.
Do we need to register our parallel funds as well?
Only the vehicle that will be marketed to and admit Korean investors has to be registered. Parallel funds that will not take Korean money do not, and we confirm this in writing at scoping so your fund counsel can rely on it.
Our law firms in Japan, Singapore and Cayman will sign the documents. Is that notarization and apostille?
No. Notarization is done by a notary public, and the apostille is a separate certificate issued afterwards by the government authority of that country (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan, for example). Both are generally required for foreign documents filed with Korean authorities.
The PPM is not a signed document. Can it be notarized?
Yes. In Korean practice the GP's authorized signatory signs a short statement that the attached documents are true and current copies, and the notary certifies that signature. The notary does not certify the contents. We provide the statement wording.
Can all documents be notarized at once?
Yes, and we recommend it. Twelve documents notarized in one sitting by one GP signatory is typically two to three weeks faster than notarizing them entity by entity.
Our service provider is not licensed. Is that a problem?
It has to be explained, not hidden. Where an affiliate operates under a notification regime rather than a license, we file the notification with a translation and confirm the approach with the officer. Japan's qualified-institutional-investor notification and comparable regimes elsewhere are handled this way.
We have no license certificate in Singapore, only the MAS register entry.
That is usually sufficient together with the ACRA business profile. We prepare both and the related confirmation letter.
What is an "internal confirmation letter" and who signs it?
A letter from the representative director of each related party confirming no criminal penalty in the past three years and no ongoing business suspension. We supply a combined template and check signatory titles and contact details before you sign.
The fund has not made investments yet. What financials do we need?
For a newly formed fund the financial statements, asset composition and capital contribution evidence are marked not applicable. We do check public filings such as SEC Form D against what the GP tells us, because the officer may.
How long does the FSS review take?
Three to five months from kick-off in our recent experience, with the review stage itself depending on the officer's caseload. We report what we hear from the officer every week instead of quoting a fixed date.
Who talks to the FSS?
We do, under a power of attorney from the GP. Every call and email with the officer is summarized to you the same day.
What happens after registration?
Sales reports, investor notifications, amendment filings when registered information changes, and annual registration tax. We can handle these on a retainer or hand over a calendar.
Request a consultation
Tell us the closing date.We will tell you what has to happen first.
Leave the basics below. You will hear back within one business day (Seoul time) with the first questions we would ask and whether the timeline is realistic.