Comparative Study on Essential Requisites of Contracts of East Asia

The worldwide depression by America's financial crisis brought many difficulties not only in Asia's finance but also in practical economics. In this situation, among Korea, Japan, and China in Northeast Asia, and ASEAN such as Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia, it is tried to cope with the present economic crisis. Also, we assume an Economic Community in Asia and are trying to build the foundational work on this, facing with the economic conditions in America or the European Union in the future. As a part of the work, like a given example of the European Union, studies for every Asian legal system and argument about the unification of the law are very important basic work to be achieved with the economic cooperation. As of today, the scholars in Korea, China and Japan are interested in the unification of the law in Northeast Asia and they regularly hold the international symposium in Research Institute of Asia Private Law established in 2006 * "This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2010." ** This is a lightly edited transcription of a speech I gave at the "International Conference on Law and Culture in South-East Asia", July 13. 2011, University of Indonesia in Jakarta/Indonesia. *** Professor of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea In 2007, the Institute held a symposium celebrating the anniversary of its founding and launched its own magazine. Also, the discussion on the unified law uniting not only Northeast Asia, but also Southeast Asia is in progress and for this, studies on the legislation of Southeast Asia are actively on going Korea Legislation Research Institute(KLRI) has contributed to study on the legislation of Asia, by publishing the magazine "Asia Law Studies" in Korean language and "Asia Law Review" in english monthly from the year 2004. However, studies for law of Japan and China in Northeast Asia are vivid while the law exchanges between Korea and Southeast are insufficient. Under the circumstances, the exchanges of the law between Southeast Asia and Korea are very meaningful. This paper is intended to compare contract establishment terms of Korea and some Southeast Asian countries. As seen in CISG(the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods) and the PECL(the Principles of European Contract Law), contract law is not much different among countries compared to other property law and family law. The one is ruled by rationality, the other by ethic and local tradition and values. The comparative study on this area is meaningful, so far as it would give rise to deep study on the entire private law in Southeast Asia. In this paper, I am going to compare establishment and essential requisites of contracts of Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Contract establishment is systematically the foremost part of contract law prior to contract effect, its performance and remedies.