This part of the Supreme Court website features select Supreme Court Decisions and Orders handed down from January 1, 2000 to the present. Featured cases include: criminal cases on human rights and due process; private law cases involving international transactions, foreign capital investment, and foreign business activities in Korea; and tort cases, to name just a few, which may have legal implications beyond national borders and embody clear and distinctive legal reasoning worthy of notice by the international legal community, notwithstanding the peculiarities of the Korean legal system.

Each Decision or Order is organized into the following sections: Citation (date and docket number of the case), Title indicating the nature of the case, Main Issues and Holdings, Summary of Decision, Reference Provisions, Reference Cases and their respective citations to the Korean version of the Collection of Supreme Court Decisions or the Supreme Court Decisions Report, Parties to the lawsuit, Citation to the lower court case from which the appeal was taken, Disposition, and Reasoning as provided in the Korean version of the Collection of Supreme Court Decisions or the Supreme Court Decisions Report. Of these, Main Issues and Holdings, Summary of Decision, Reference Provisions, and Reference Cases constitute no part of the opinion of the Supreme Court.

In a case citation as in “2002Da39364,” the number “2002” indicates the year in which the appeal was taken; “Da,” the procedural classification of the case; and “39364,” the docket number. The following procedural classification codes are used in Supreme Court case citations: “Da” for civil appellate cases to the Supreme Court; “Na” for civil appellate cases to a second instance court; “Gadan” for civil cases in a first instance court’s single judge bench; “Gahap” for civil cases in a first instance court’s three-judge panel; “Do,” “No,” “Godan,” and “Gohap” for criminal cases; “Du” for administrative and tax law appellate cases; “Hu” for patent law appellate cases; “Meu” for family law appellate cases; and “Chu” for special litigation cases.

In the part of the case citation that reads “Gong2000Sang, 1593” under the Reference Cases header, “Gong” refers to the Korean version of the Supreme Court Decisions Report, “2000” indicates the year of its publication, “Sang” means Volume I covering the first half of the year (while “Ha” means Volume II covering the latter half), and “1593” indicates the page number. Case citations such as “2009Hun-Gong255” refers to Constitutional Court Decisions, along with their filing year and docket number.

On this webpage, Decisions and Orders are organized in the following manner: (1) Cases are first classified into separate chapters on Private Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, Taxation, and Intellectual Property; (2) They are then organized under each chapter in the order of case date; and (3) Those cases decided on the same date are sequenced in the order of docket number.

Where privacy is concerned, such personal identifiers as the identity of person, employer, address, and vehicle registration number are redacted and replaced by such generic party designations as the Plaintiff, Plaintiff 1, Defendant, Defendant 1, Party "A," Party "B," Company "A," Company "B," Non-Party, Non-Party 1, Non-Indicted, and Non-Indicted 1.

The English translation of reference legal provisions is provided by the Korea Legislation Research Institute.