소비자안전법제의 기본구조와 개선방향

Consumer Protection Law refers a law which aims to protect people's life and body in people's daily life as consumers. (1) Administration Disaster and safety management systems of central government and local government are formed under the disaster and safety management basic law. For the consumer safety, many governmental departments cooperate and build the administrative system of safety management. Detailed rules of governmental duty about consumer safety are provided in the Framework Act of Consumer. The national administration system is composed of ① making consumer protection policy ② collecting and announcing the product risk information ③ setting the standards for product labeling ④ inspecting products and announcing the result ⑤ administrative officials' right to investigate and ⑥ corrective measures such as collecting and discarding products. In this text, basic enforcements of the administration for consumers would be considered. At the level of administrative practice, competent authorities, divided by the area of goods and services, are in charge of the work on consumer safety in accordance with the sectoral legislations (ex; Food Sanitation Law). Current administrative regulation needs to switch over from the regulation of police state to consumer-protecting regulation. To secure the consumer safety, a number of governmental departments have to cooperate and establish the administrative system of safety management firmly. (2) Civil Liability When a product causes damage to people's life, body or properties except the product itself due to a defect of the product, which means the lack of safety normally expected, consumers can hold manufacturers or providers responsible. A product is said to be in a defective condition, when it is unreasonably dangerous for end-consumers due to the lack of safety normally expected for ordinary use or consumption. A defective product is unreasonably dangerous when it is dangerous to an extent beyond which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who bought the product with the ordinary knowledge of the product's characteristics which were common to the society. Current Product Liability Law has an excessively wide definition of seller's cause of exemption. The scope of the exemption has to be narrowed for substantive relief of damage from the defective products. (3) Procedures 'Group litigation (Verbandsklage) system under the Framework Act of Consumer' is available to remove defective products from the market. The procedures, however, such as getting permission of the court, are very complicated. Class action system allows multiple consumers who got damage from the same defective product to get relief quickly at low cost. But in Korean law, there is no special provision about the consumer class action. Thus people only can use general joint action and appointed party system in inefficient way. It is rather convenient to propose a settlement of consumer dispute to Korea Consumer Agency as a non-judicial procedure for dispute resolution