사회적협동조합의 비영리성과 공익성에 대한 소고

Framework Act on Cooperatives was established in 2012, and consequently, social cooperatives were founded as non-profit corporations. As of November 2014, a total of 202 social cooperatives were created, and the number is still quickly increasing. The social cooperatives were first established in order to contribute to social integrations and balanced development of national economy as providing vulnerable social groups with social services and carrying out these other activities to improve life quality of local communities. A nation itself and other governmental organs are regarded as the First Sector as private profit-making enterprises and the rest are called the Second Sector and the Third Sector respectively, and the social cooperatives as the non-profit corporations are included in the Third Sector. As the current non-profit corporations had been institutionalized into the profit-making enterprise system, they are now allowed to offer social welfare services to both the local communities and the vulnerable groups which had not properly enjoyed those welfare services because of inadequate systems of the nation. In terms of the property reversion of the social cooperatives as in the non-profit corporations, the properties are individually possessed which is what distinguishes the social cooperatives from unincorporated associations. At present, various legal issues are being talked about in relation to how much of the autonomy guarantee and limit should be accepted based on these current eight special laws related to the cooperatives, and plus, the legal system is also trying to figure out how to deal with how all this money invested should be refunded, how remaining properties should be returned and others when there are multiple non-profit organizations still working as unincorporated associations. Researches on the social cooperatives have been hardly carried out, and inthe light of that, this study hopes that what it discusses eventually leads South Korea to a chance to keep improving the growing social cooperatives depending on their own circumstances.