Nam Phan (Berkeley Law, ’18) was selected to present his research paper at Seoul National University (SNU) in June 2018 for the international conference entitled, Korea and Vietnam in the Modern and Contemporary Ages: Comparisons and New Connections.
Nam is a member of the Korea Law Center and has clerked at Kim & Chang during his 1L summer. Currently he is doing a semester away in Seoul working with the Gong Gam Human Rights Law Foundation on issues concerning Vietnamese migrants in Korea. Nam will be joining the New York law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy after graduating.
As a Vietnamese with a strong passion and learned understanding for both Korean culture and history, Nam wrote a research paper in his Comparative Law class at Berkeley that examines the parallels of the Sino legal tradition as well as the Colonial law heritage across Korea and Vietnam.
The thesis that Nam will present at SNU in June 2018 is named, Comparative Constitutionalism between Korea and Vietnam, which is an expansion of his original paper. This thesis will compare and contrast how the Korean and the Vietnamese developed their constitutions in the modern period. Both countries started with quite liberal constitutions, which were amended several times to consolidate the power in the hands of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Korean military dictatorship. Moving toward the 80’s, Korea amended its constitution as part of the democratization process, while Vietnam did the same, but with the purpose of accommodating its economic reformation.
Since this is pioneer research in comparative Vietnamese and Korean legal history, Nam is seeking inputs from Korean scholars and students who are interested in this topic. He can be reached at nhphan1@berkeley.edu.