THE GENERAL POWER-OF-ATTORNEY SYSTEM: AN INTRODUCTION On January 1, 1999, the Korean Industrial Property Office implemented a variety of reforms, including the incorporation of the General Power-of-Attorney system, which applies to most proceedings regarding the filing and patenting/registration of a Korean application.  The existing system, using the "standard" Power of Attorney form, is maintained and is necessary for certain prosecution steps, including oppositions, trials, briefs, and any changes in the status of the applicant or registrant. Under the new system, the representative attorney designated by an executed General Power of Attorney is empowered to undertake the proceedings for a diverse range of present and future applications from a given applicant, without a separate Power being executed and filed for each new application and without a specific case being stated on the form.  The applicant may freely bestow a separate General Power of Attorney to any number of local attorneys -- even to attorneys from more than one law firm -- and all such Powers will continue to be in effect as long as the documents remain on file with the Korean Industrial Property Office, whereby the applicant is allotted one general power code per designation of empowered attorneys.  The General Power of Attorney then follows the applicant-attorney combination for all future filings but may be retracted at any time upon applicant request. Since no application need be specified, a General Power of Attorney may be submitted well before the filing of any application, and late-filing for a given application is permissible under the same conditions applied when using the standard Power form.  As an added advantage, once a General Power of Attorney is on file, there will be no further concern over late-filing fees.  Therefore, the use of the General Power of Attorney system is being encouraged for all new applications, to the benefit of applicant-clients as well as the representative attorneys involved, with no disadvantage to the applicant and without restricting any subsequent action.