전자상거래소비자보호법의 체제 개편

Since its legislation in 2002, Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce, etc.(hereinafter "Electronic Commerce Act") has made a great contribution towards consumer protection and development of business in e-commerce and mail order sales. However, Electronic Commerce Act has many juridical problems. Especially it has been pointed out that the definition and relation of e-commerce and mail order sales is not clear, so the application of the Act can be confused. From this point, it is very meaningful that Korea Fair Trade Commission has started overall revision of Electronic Commerce Act, including the change of definition of e-commerce and mail order sales. This article is aimed at providing draft proposal for the overall revision of Electronic Commerce Act. It is very hard task to regulate e-commerce and mail order sales at once in one Act. However, unless the relation of e-commerce and mail order sales is clearly coded, the systematic problems of the Act cannot be solved thoroughly. At this point, this article suggests that e-commerce is defined as one of the mail order sales. This conclusion results from the acception of the somewhat fixed notion approved tacitly by business and KFTC. It is expected that this new definition of e-commerce can solve many systematic problems of the Act. However, at the same time the new definition of e-commerce can occur a new problem to downsize e-commerce, that is, because when e-commerce is defined as one of the mail order sales, so-called electronic payment can be put outside e-commerce. This problem can be cleared though by legal inter- pretation that electronic payment can be included in e-commerce, but if the legal interpretation cannot be accepted, the definition of e-commerce should be complemented by additional clause that electronic payment is regulated by Electronic Commerce Act.