전자문서에 있어서의 법제의 동향과 증거력에 관한 연구

The rapid and wide-spread growth in the use of computers and the Internet has caused many a number of cases which could not properly be addressed with the existing legal system. As the traditional centerpiece of communication, the paper documents give way to the emerging electronic documents, new sets of laws are being introduced to address them. To support this shift to electronic documents, the government is also trying various options to facilitate the usage and spreading of the electronic documents. But the existing regulations and practices are still heavily centered on the paper documents, which is hindering the growth of the use and circulation of electronic documents. This led to persisting requests of enhancing the legal system that covers these issues, which also evoked the question whether the electronic documents can truly be treated as being equal to the paper documents. With this as the beginning point of the inquiry, in this study we examined and investigated the concepts and characteristics of the electronic documents, the current trends surrounding electronic documents in Korea and other nations, and finally, the evidential credibilities of theses new type of documents in civil lawsuits. In conclusion, we suggest as the implications of this study that there need to be discussions for revising and improving the existing codes of laws, systematic reviews and discussions to transform various practices and principles that were formed based on the paper documents to fit electronic documents, preparation of legal solutions for the possibilities of damaging or altering the certified electronic signature system, as well as a careful discussion on the development of a means to specify the arbitrary judgment made by the judges of the courts in terms of the evidential credibilities of the electronic documents.