Welcome to Korean Research Center for Guardianship and Trusts.
We were established as of 1st September 2016 under the auspice of Korean Research Foundation.
The purpose of our research center is to conduct research on current legal and social environment surrounding persons with impairments to decision making ability in Korea to improve their human rights and facilitate their integration into communities.
Our research center makes much of the self-determination right of persons with mental illness, developmental disabilities, dementia and other kinds of disabilities related to decision makings, but we do not make little of the necessity of preventing those persons from imminent serious dangers. Emphasizing the right to self-determination necessarily entails the responsibility for the results coming from self-determinations. Those results might be disadvantageous to the persons who exercise their own rights to self-determination. Even the persons with impairments to decision making ability are worthy of risking such disadvantages because it can have educational effect on their personal development unless those disadvantages are seriously dangerous to their life, body and important property. It means that the protection of those persons from danger might be a last resort. What is needed to those persons is assistance and support rather than protection. We will conduct research on the social and legal systems for persons with dementia, mental illness and developmental disabilities who are situated at the danger of deprivation of their own rights to self-determination by surrogate decision makers such as legal protectors and guardians.
We are absolutely against the application of full guardianship to disabled persons, moreover we are against any type of guardianship which limits and deprives the legal capacity of persons under guardianship. We are for various kinds of alternatives to legal guardianship, whereby the self-determination can be fully exercised for the care and daily lives of persons with impairments to decision makings.
For that purpose, we have conducted and will conduct research on lasting or enduring power of attorney, advance directives to care and medical treatment, trust schemes for care and daily life, representatives for social benefits and social services and proper use of court-appointed guardianship services as a last resort. For that purpose, we have cooperated and will cooperate with foreign institutes and academics and practitioners. We welcome any kind of contribution and cooperation to our work.
