Claim No: CL-2024-000563 - [2025] EWHC 1586 (Comm)

I heard expert evidence on the correct translation of “sah-up-booh-moon” from Professor Yeon who is currently Professor Emeritus of Korean Language and Linguistics at SOAS (called by Energyen) and Professor Kiaer, currently YMB—KF Professor of Korean Linguistics at the University of Oxford (called by the Defendants). Both were extremely highly qualified experts on Korean linguistics, and I mean no disrespect to either expert when I observe that I doubt that quite so much academic firepower was necessary to resolve this very narrow issue.

Professor Yeon refers to dictionary definitions of “booh-moon” as “area”, “field” or “sector”, which is classified according to certain standards or sectors. That opinion was supported by views as to how business areas within a company might involve different departments and teams, such that “the context endorses the literal meaning of the terms used”. Professor Yeon’s acceptance that context is relevant in this enquiry is significant.

Professor Kiaer translates “bu-mun” (adopting the Revised Romanisation of Korean system) as “sector, division or branch within a broader domain”, which she states are “routinely used to denote functional domains rather than juridical entities”. She expresses the opinion that the compound term “sa-eop bu-mun” is “most accurately understood as referring to a functionally defined division or area of operations within a business, the precise nuance depending on the surrounding context”. Professor Kiaer too emphasises the importance of context:

“While the lexical meaning of 사업부문 (sa-eop bu-mun, 事業部門) may be rendered as “business division” or “business area,” its interpretation must also be approached from a pragmatic and contextual linguistic perspective. In particular, its function and nuance should be considered within the discursive environment of corporate restructuring and the statutory language of the Spin-Off Plan. Such an approach recognises that broader meaning may emerge not only from dictionary definitions but through the situated use of terminology in legal and institutional documents.”

I am satisfied, on the basis of the opinion of both experts, that the disputed phrase can extend both to a conceptual divide, and to a specific division or branch of the operations of a business which perform particular activities, with the precise meaning depending on context. I accept Professor Kiaer’s evidence (which was broadly accepted by Professor Yeon) that the use of words in the Korean language is very dynamic, and that the phrase in issue here is capable of a broad range of meanings dependent on context. I am satisfied that the better interpretation of the phrase used in the Spin-Off plan is to embrace the business or activities of the offshore plant business unit, rather than specific types of business activity regardless of which internal unit undertakes them:

Finally, it is notable in this case that the two firms of independent translators who originally produced translations of the phrase “sah-up-booh-moon” translated that phrase as “business units”. Further, the point now made about “business areas” does not feature in the first expert memorandum or second expert report from Mr Lee, Energyen’s Korean law expert, which might suggest that the meaning now contended for by Energyen does not, in the context in which the phrase appears, leap off the page.