Soo Seok was born in Seoul, South Korea, and first came to the U.S. as part of the U.S. Congress-Korea National Assembly Exchange Program with Congressional Internship in 2006.
Graduating summa cum laude from high school, he went to Handong Global University, a pioneering Christian university, where he double majored in political science and English. He was also a reporter, photographer and Vice Editor for The Handong Shinmun, the official newspaper of the university. While at Handong, Soo Seok studied at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in Jilin, China, as part of the university’s study abroad program. He graduated with Meritorious Commendation, an award given to a graduating member recognized for his outstanding contribution to the school.
After graduation, he applied for the Korean Air Force and finished the Officer Training School as sixth among about 400 candidates. He served in the Korean Combat Operations Intelligence Center (K-COIC) at the Osan Air Base and worked with the U.S. 7th Air Force to analyze North Korea’s military activities. He also served as the co-president of the U.S.-Korea Company Grade Officers’ Council in the K-COIC.
Before entering law school, he had a brief stint at a global clothing company where he was in charge of managing Liz Claiborne Men’s products. Then he worked for the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), an educational policy research institute under the Office of the Prime Minister.
In December 2007, he graduated cum laude from Handong International Law School (HILS), a Christian law school that teaches U.S. common law in English, also located in South Korea. He was the Lead Articles and Acquisitions Editor for the Regent Journal of International Law, a law journal published by Regent University’s School of Law in collaboration with HILS, publishing Extraterritorial Application of Korean Competition Law, 6 Regent J. Int’l L. 171 (2007). He was also selected to represent the school’s moot court team in the Willem C. Vis (East) International Commercial Arbitration Moot.
Interested in human rights issues, especially regarding North Korea, he was involved in a project commissioned by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Serving as the interview team leader, he and his team successfully located and interviewed a number of North Korean defectors and wrote a first draft and analysis for the lead research professor, which later came out as a publication titled A Prison Without Bars by the USCIRF in 2008.
Active in serving various student bodies, he was awarded the Judge Richard S. Arnold Christian Leadership Award and the Nehemiah Exemplary Christian Leadership Award. More importantly, he met his wife, a fellow classmate, and got married on campus during his graduating year.
After graduation, Soo Seok came to Montgomery, Alabama, and interned for the Honorable Justice Tom Parker of the Alabama Supreme Court. He and his wife both passed the Alabama Bar Examination in 2008 and became the first few Korean Alabama attorneys.
Before joining Beasley Allen, he pursued his LL.M. degree in intellectual property law at the George Washington University Law School with an emphasis on trademark and copyright. His thesis “Contributory Liability of Trademark Infringement: From Flea Market to Online Market Place” was later published in the Intellectual Property & Information Law Review in Korea.
