Background
Our client, a clan association, sought to recover ownership of clan property including a large forest holding of some 180,000 square meters that had long been registered, scattered, in the names of numerous individuals. As registered holders died, rights had fragmented through inheritance and representation, making the relationships complex. Changchun represented the clan (the plaintiff).
The Issue — Can the Clan's Substance and the Title Trust Be Proven?
For a clan to recover land it must prove ① that the clan actually exists as an association, and ② that the land is clan property held in an individual's name in title only (a title trust). The key was to organize, without omission, the registration history against numerous registered holders and heirs.
How Changchun Helped
Changchun (attorney Jaeyoon Jung) proved the clan's organizational and operational substance and the history of forming and managing its property, and set out systematically — holder by holder and inheritance line by inheritance line — how each parcel of forest had come to be registered in an individual's name as clan property, establishing the clan's ownership and the registered holders' obligations to transfer without omission.
Outcome
The court granted our client's (the clan's) claims in full, ordering the registered holders and their heirs to complete the transfer of ownership registration of the forest land and other property to the clan. The clan returned its scattered property to its rightful owner.
Even clan property fragmented across many names, with tangled rights, can be restored where the clan's substance and the title trust are proven and the registration history is set in order. (Outcomes may differ depending on the facts of each matter.)