• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.3-54
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• 2002

When the ruling of Foreign Arbitral Awards contradicts the public policy of the enforcement state, it can be a ground for a refusal to enforce the ruling. New York Convention V section 2, UNCITRAL section 36, and Korean arbitration law section 36 confirm this principle. The final ruling of international arbitral awards should be respected according to the international convention or the principle of reciprocity, which cancel out the above principle: when the ruling contradicts the country's public policy, it can be refused to enforcement. Since the Helsinki General Convention, ILA have studied upon it and presented the final report and recommendation during the 2002 New Delhi General Convention. In it, firstly, the finality of awards rendered in the context of international commercial arbitration should be respected save in exceptional circumstances. Secondly, every state is recommended the “international public policy”, on which it can refuse to follow the ruling of international arbitral awards, and advised to respect it as far as possible.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.51-88
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• 2006

The obligation on a national court to recognize and enforce arbitral awards as provided in Article III New York Convention, which both Korea and China have ratified, is subject to limited exceptions. Recognition and enforcement will be refused only if the party against whom enforcement is sought can show that one of the exclusive grounds for refusal enumerated in Article V(1) New York Convention has occurred. The court may also refuse enforcement ex officio if the award violates that state's public policy. This article explores the circumstances where arbitral awards may be refused enforcement under the Korean and Chinese arbitration laws. It first analyzes the relevant statutory provisions. In Korea and China, which have adopted the UNCITRAL Model law, the grounds of challenge are exhaustively defined within their respective arbitration laws. According to their arbitration laws, an arbitral award may be set aside if a party making the application proves that (i) a party to the arbitration agreement was under some incapacity or the agreement is not valid under the applicable law, (ii) the party making the application was not given proper notice of the appointment of an arbitrator or of the arbitral proceedings or was otherwise unable to present his case, (iii) the award deals with a dispute not contemplated by or not falling within the terms of the submission to arbitration or contains decisions on matters beyond the scope of the submission to arbitration, or (iv) the composition of the arbitral tribunal or the arbitral procedure was not in accordance with the agreement of the parties. An arbitral award may also be set aside ex officio by the court if the court finds that (i) the subject-matter of the dispute is not capable of settlement by arbitration under the applicable law or (ii) the award is in conflict with the public policy. This article then reviews relevant judicial decisions rendered in Korea and China to see how the courts in these countries have been interpreting the provisions specifying the grounds for challenging arbitral awards. It concludes that the courts in Korea and China rarely accept challenges to arbitral awards, thereby respecting the mandate of the New York Convention.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.3-41
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• 2016

This paper reviews the problems on the arbitral awards enforcement in the 2016 Korean Arbitration Act. In order to get easy and rapid enforcement of the arbitral awards, the new arbitration act changed the enforcement procedure from an enforcement judgement procedure to an enforcement decision procedure. However, like the old arbitration act, the new act is still not arbitration friendly. First of all, there are various problems in the new act because it does not approve that an arbitral award can be a schuldtitel (title of enforcement) of which the arbitral award can be enforced. In this paper, several problems of the new act are discussed: effect of arbitral award, approval to res judicata of enforcement decision, different trial process and result for same ground, possibility of abuse of litigation for setting aside arbitral awards and delay of enforcement caused by setting aside, infringement of arbitration customer's right to be informed, and non-internationality of enforcement of interim measures of protection, inter alia. The new arbitration act added a proviso on article 35 (Effect of Arbitral Awards). According to article 35 of the old arbitration act, arbitral awards shall have the same effect on the parties as the final and conclusive judgement of the court. The proviso of article 35 in the new act can be interpret two ways: if arbitral awards have any ground of refusal of recognition or enforcement according to article 38, the arbitral awards do not have the same effect on the parties as the final and conclusive judgement of the court; if arbitral awards have not recognised or been enforced according to article 38, the arbitral awards do not have the same effect on the parties as the final and conclusive judgement of the court. In the case of the former, the parties cannot file action for setting aside arbitral awards in article 36 to the court, and this is one of the important problems of the new act. In the new act, same ground of setting aside arbitral awards can be tried in different trial process with or without plead according to article 35 and 37. Therefore, progress of enforcement decision of arbitral awards can be blocked by the action of setting aside arbitral awards. If so, parties have to spend their time and money to go on unexpected litigation. In order to simplify enforcement procedure of arbitral awards, the new act changed enforcement judgement procedure to enforcement decision procedure. However, there is still room for the court to hear a case in the same way of enforcement judgement procedure. Although the new act simplifies enforcement procedure by changing enforcement judgement procedure to enforcement decision procedure, there still remains action of setting aside arbitral awards, so that enforcement of arbitral awards still can be delayed by it. Moreover, another problem exists in that the parties could have to wait until a seventh trial (maximum) for a final decision. This result in not good for the arbitration system itself in the respect of confidence as well as cost. If the arbitration institution promotes to use arbitration by emphasizing single-trial system of arbitration without enough improvement of enforcement procedure in the arbitration system, it would infringe the arbitration customer's right to be informed, and further raise a problem of legal responsibility of arbitration institution. With reference to enforcement procedure of interim measures of protection, the new act did not provide preliminary orders, and moreover limit the court not to recognize interim measures of protection done in a foreign country. These have a bad effect on the internationalization of the Korean arbitration system.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.25-46
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• 2010

In spite of great interest and recent innovation of the legislative system in the Arbitration and other Alternative Dispute Resolution(ADR) system, In Japan there have been only a few case in which International commercial dispute was settled through the Arbitration compared to other countries. However, we can easily expect that foreign arbitral awards which need to be recognized and enforced in Japan will gradually increase and this makes it very important for us to review the Japanese legislative system regarding recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. In this paper, I focused on the relations between applicable laws(including convention) regarding recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Japan and some issues concerning refusal of recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. Japan is a member state of several multilateral conventions concerning recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards including the New York Convention of 1958 and at least 20 bilateral agreements which include provisions in relate to the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards. Therefore there are some legal issues about the priority application between multilateral and bilateral agreements in relate to Article 7(1) of the New York Convention. In Japan, as I mentioned in this paper, there are incoherent opinions concerning this issue. To solve it substantially it would seem appropriate to build up concrete and explicit provisions concerning the application of priority between multilateral and bilateral agreements. On the other hand, in relate to the application between the New York Convention and National Law, it is necessary to take general approach regarding the priority application between Convention (Treaty) and National Law, considering the national application of conventions under the Constitutional System of each country. Among the grounds for non-recognition/enforcement, there are the ones that are decided under the law of the requested country, for instance, arbitrability and public policy. It would therefore be possible that some foreign arbitral awards would not be recognized in Japan especially relating to the arbitrability because its scope in Japan is not so large. Regarding the enforcement of awards annulled in their place of origin, some positive opinions in recent Japanese legal discussions, say that annulled awards should be enforced as a counter strategy of developed countries and judiciary discretion of the requested country would be needed. As mentioned in this paper, the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards is closely related to judicial policy of the requested country as the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgment is. Even though there existed uniform rules on recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards like the New York convention, each country has different internal legal status of conventions under its own Constitutional System and tends to interpret the provisions based in its own profit. Therefore, it is necessary to review, in the light of conflict of laws, the national legislative system including legal status of conventions of the requested countries concerning recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.3-24
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• 2010

In the approaching 21th century, the outstanding development in international trade and commerce has established arbitration as the preferred form of dispute resolution on international business transaction. Because the form of commercial dispute becomes more complicated and varied with the quantitative increase of them, the reasonable and rapid settlement of them must be the important problem simultaneously. In this article, the author discusses various issues on the recognition and enforcement of an foreign arbitral awards under Korean Arbitration Act, which is modeled after the Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration of the UNCITRAL of 1985. The Dec. 31, 1999 amendment to the Korean Arbitration Act admits the basis for enforcement of foreign arbitral awards rendered under United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958(commonly known as the New York Convention). Korea has acceded to the New York Convention since 1973. When acceding to the convention, Korea declared that it will apply the Convention to the recognition and enforcement of awards made only in the territory of anther Contracting State on the basis of reciprocity. Also, Korea declared that it will apply the Convention only to differences arising out of legal relationships, whether contractual or not, which are considered as commercial under the national law of Korea. The provision relating to the enforcement of arbitral awards falling under the New York Convention consists of Article III, IV, V. In particular, Article V of the New York Convention enumerates the grounds for refusal of recognition foreign arbitral awards. The grounds are separated into two categories : One that abides by procedures and the others are based on national legal sovereignty. In Korea, a holder of a foreign arbitral award is obliged to request from the court a judgment ordering enforcement of awards. Because Korea requires enforcement to be based on a judgement, the result is that arbitral of award holders are forced to institute domestic litigation.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.79-103
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• 2014

In light of increasing international trade in recent years, international arbitration has been more widely used by international parties to resolve their conflicts. Thus, the need for reliable and effective enforcement of foreign arbitral awards has amplified. To facilitate the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, the New York Convention lists grounds for the refusal of recognition and enforcement in Article V. This paper examines prominent U.S. case law on Article V(1)(b), which is put in place to ensure that arbitration proceedings are conducted properly in accordance with due process requirements: proper notice to parties and an opportunity to a fundamentally fair hearing. This examination of case law conveys that U.S. courts refuse to enforce foreign arbitral awards pursuant to Article V(1)(b) only when due process rights of the party against whom the award is to be enforced are clearly violated by the arbitral tribunal. This paper also reveals that U.S. courts mainly defer to arbitral tribunals' discretion, especially as to evidentiary matters. Therefore, it is predicted that U.S. courts will likely continue to narrowly construe the grounds in Article V to facilitate reliable and effective enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in the U.S.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.49
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• pp.61-86
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• 2011

Korea Supreme Court has given thirty-nine time's judgments on enforcement of Arbitral awards for thirty-six arbitration cases and made four time's decision on the arbitration cases since Korea arbitration act was enacted in 1966. Most of the arbitration cases appealed to the Supreme Court was to obtain the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards or to set aside the arbitral awards according to the Korea arbitration Act article 36 and article 37, by reason of (a) a party to the arbitration agreement was under some incapacity under the law applicable to him or the said agreement is not valid under the law to which the parties have subjected it, or failing any indication thereon, (b) a party making the application was not given proper notice of the appointment of the arbitrator or arbitrators or of the arbitral proceedings or was otherwise unable to present his case (c) the award deals with a dispute not contemplated by or not falling within the terms of the submission to arbitration, or contains decisions on matters beyond the scope of the submission to arbitration. However, 5 cases of these arbitral awards were refused to obtain the enforcement of Arbitral awards and have been cancelled finally by the Supreme Court only by the New York Convention of 1958.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.3-19
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• 2020

With the advent of the Free Trade Agreement between Korea and the U.S. and an increase in trade volume between the two countries, the possibility of commercial disputes has escalated among international merchants. It has been well-known that arbitration as an alternative dispute resolution is an efficient way to resolve international commercial disputes. When arbitral awards are enforced in the judicial system, the court will inevitably have to be involved with the enforcement procedures. The court is a typical legal entity to confirm arbitral awards. Through a confirmation process, the winning party obtains the same legal status of final judgment rendered by the court. However, a winning party in arbitration will have to overcome a legal hurdle in the enforcement process of arbitral awards. This article aims to investigate how the courts control the arbitration practices and what the basic legal issues in the enforcement of arbitral awards are. The US Federal Arbitration Act is investigated, while relevant cases are reviewed and updated for legal analysis.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.59-84
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• 2017

The effects of an arbitration agreement depend on the legislative policy of the nation where arbitral awards are made and where awards are worked out in the private procedures. According to the main body of Article 35 of the Korean Arbitration Act, arbitral awards have the same effects on the parties as the final and conclusive judgment of the court. This is only possible if the awards are formed by satisfying all the legal requirements, have gone into effect, and have become final and conclusive. It is for the legal stability and the effectiveness of the settlement of disputes that the Act grants arbitral awards. While investigating the effects of an arbitral award, the character of the arbitration in which the party's autonomy applies should be considered, along with the substance of the disputes which parties intend to resolve by an arbitration agreement. The proviso of Article 35, which was added in the 2016 Act, says that the main body of the Article shall not apply if recognition or enforcement of arbitral awards is refused under Article 38. Two stances have been proposed in interpreting the proviso. One of them is that there are grounds for refusing the recognition and enforcement of the awards. The other one is that the ruling of the dismissal of a request for enforcement has been final and conclusive. According to the former, it is really unexplained as to its relations with the action for setting aside arbitral awards to court and the distinction between nullity and revocation, and so on. Therefore, its meaning must be comprehended on the basis of the latter so that the current Act system with revocation litigation could be kept. The procedures of setting aside, recognizing, and enforcing arbitral awards are independent of one another under the Act. It is apprehended that the duplicate regulations may lead to the concurrence or contradiction of a court's judgment and ruling. Thus, we need to take proper measures against the negative sides by interfacing and conciliating these proceedings.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.121-150
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• 2006

Under the New York Convention, parties can petition the courts of the United States to confirm foreign arbitral awards. Although there is no definition in the Convention for 'non-domestic' awards, in the United States, federal and state courts read the Convention broadly and interpret this as permitting the enforcing authority to supply its own definition of 'non-domestic' in conformity with its own domestic law. There are a number of federal cases on this point. The court preferred this broad construction of 'non-domestic' awards because it comported with the intended purpose of the Convention, which was entered into to encourage the recognition and enforcement of international arbitral awards. This means that in applying the New York Convention, U.S. courts have responded to the underlying spirit rather than the technical letter of the Convention. In brief, the New York Convention has much broader application in the United States. It is applicable not only to awards rendered outside of the United States, but also to non-domestic awards rendered within United States. As this article suggests, the general attitude towards foreign awards is more pro-enforcement in the United States, whether the award is rendered in favor of the American party or in favor of the foreign party.