일본의 보험법개정과 시사점 - 총론과 공통규정을 중심으로 -

In Japan, the Insurance Law was enacted at the 169th Ordinary Session of the Diet as law No.56 of 2 0 0 8 and will become effective from April 1, 2010 by governmental order. The Insurance Law previously indicated regulations on insurance contracts stipulated in Chapter 1 0 of Part 2 "Commercial Transactions" and Chapter 6 of Part 3 "Maritime Commerce" of the Commercial Code, but The Insurance Law has not been revised for about 100 years and was written in a classical literary style using old type of characters. The Insurance Act was enacted as a new separate law, independent from the Commercial Code. The new Act significantly revises regulations on insurance contracts from different perspectives including policyholders’ protection. The revision is in line with the trend of reforming civil rules, e.g., the adoption of a colloquial style of writing by the Civil Code, revision of Companies Act, etc. The basic goal of this reform is (1)To revise the regulations to be applied to parties concerned to insurance contracts to meet the needs of today's society and, (2) As one of the laws setting civil rules, to adopt a colloquial style of writing using easily understandable expressions. In other hand, the Ministry of Justice of Korea proposed new commercial code to revised part 4(insurance contract) in 2008, but the bill pending till now in the national assembly. The Japanese Commercial Code(include “insurance contract”) was the model law of Korean Commercial code(Part 4. “Insurance contract). The writer review the background and contents of Japanese new insurance law. But this article focused on the common topic of life and non-life insurance contract, because the outline and main points of the new law are too much to introduce in one article. The writer expect to find some lessons from the Japanese experience.