심향(心鄕) 박원선(朴元善)의 생애와 법사상 - 전통적 商事(商人)制度의 현대적 조명을 중심으로 -

This article intends to review the life of Sim-Hyang(心鄕), PARK, Won-Seon and ultimately derives the philosophy of law shown in his study and research. For that, by reviewing his background from the childhood to undergraduate days under Japanese occupation, it is deduced that he strived to concentrate on realizing the nationalism based on the Christian sacrifice through commercial law. Further, by researching his works after his entering academia, it is confirmed that being full of academic mission motivated by the nationalism, he found the root of the Korean traditional commercial culture, enhanced it intra and internationally, and contributed to the development of the commercial cultureas well as studied the analytics on the existing commercial law as a scholar and an educator. Lastly, among the works of his life, “Study on the Korean traditional commercial institutions and the history of Korean commercial law, ”the representative main contents related to peddler, commission agency and broker are considered overall and, within the possible scope, by comparing their similarities and differences with the current commercial law and each other, his great achievements are briefly verified. As such, it is presumed that the review on the academic achievements and legal thoughts of PARK, Won-Seon, one of Korean first generation legal scholars may be full of suggestions for the development of the commercial culture and the subsequent studying the current commercial law as well as the legal history. Although spiritually and philosophically based on the devout Christian background and the convinced national ethos, he chose not the religion or philosophy but the law, especially the commercial law, as his major and showed the modesty and puritanical hardworking and robustness, growing as agreat scholar. These are sufficient to be representation of the unprecedented exemplary scholar in the Korean legal history and such spirit shall remain asgreat lessons for all junior jurists and legal scholars. As he pointed out, in the Korean traditional commercial cultures that our ancestors left for us, there still remain lots of undiscovered precious heritages. Of course, although essentially the commercial law has flexible, progressive, global and unifying features, by inheriting the will and unparalleled achievements of PARK, Won-Seon and discovering, complementing, and developing them, contributing to the development of the new commercial culture may be our mission as descendants.