Our Story — Letters to a Young Arbitrator

Tom Villalón

Tom Villalón is a former associate at the International Arbitration & Cross-border Litigation team at Bae, Kim & Lee in Seoul, Korea.

Tom received his B.A. with Honors from Dartmouth College, and received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Hawaii Law School where he was a Graduate Degree Fellow at the East-West Center.

While in law school, Tom competed in a major global moot court competition where he won first-place individual oralist, receiving the highest individual score of any competitor in the world.

A former 100-mile ultra marathoner and endurance athlete, Tom speaks Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, English and Arabic, and is proficient in French and German. He is published in Chinese and English, and has served as a translator and negotiator for the Chinese government, the Chilean government, as well as various members of the private sector in Asia and the Americas.

Pem Tshering

Pem Tshering is an associate in the International Arbitration & Cross-border Litigation team at Bae, Kim & Lee in Seoul, Korea.

Pem received her LL.B. from the University of Durham in 2013 and her LL.M in Advanced Studies in Public International Law from Leiden University in 2015. Pem also successfully completed the Bar Professional Training Course (Outstanding) at City University, London, on a full Inn’s scholarship (Master Treasurer’s Fund) in 2014. She was then Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2014, as the first Bhutanese member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

An avid footballer, often the odd-one out in all-men’s teams, Pem speaks Dzongkha, Hindi, and Nepali, and is working on increasing her fluency in French and Korean. Prior to joining Bae, Kim and Lee, Pem clerked at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, where she assisted arbitral tribunals on major inter-State and investment disputes, including arbitrations relating to natural resources, maritime and land boundaries, the law of the sea, and contractual disputes; as well as assisting the Commission in the first ever UNCLOS Conciliation.