한국소비자법 35년, 회고와 과제

In 1960s, the consumer law in Korea started to sprout little by little. Entering the 1980s, it showed dramatic changes in the area of legislation and administration. Consumer law had settled into shape through the Contract Terms Regulation Act in 1986, Installment Transaction Act and Door-to-Door Sales Act in 1991, Product Liability Act in 2000, and Electronic Commercial Law in 2002. But these acts were poor in contents for their titles. It was very rare for the courts to admit the claims of lawsuits and allow the valid legal measures as remedies of consumer damage because of the concern that excessive consumer requests may harm the business of entrepreneurs. Theories and precedents have developed many legal principles with gradual improvement since 1980, and consumer law established its own independent domains in 2000s. Recently consumer law is facing the drastic changes. As the legislative bill to incorporate consumer law into the Civil Code and unify the consumer law has become under review in earnest, reinspection of consumer law is being carried out. With discussions about revision of contract law at the Civil Code Revision Committee in the Ministry of Justice, the movement to accept the principles of consumer contract law has developed. Legal principles of contract regulation, cooling-off right at the consumer contracts, and the seller's obligation to provide information are magnified as the points of the Civil Code revision. If these principles of consumer law are incorporated into the Civil Code, it will be beneficial for consumers to find and use their rights and also will make jurists develope their legal reasoning out of consideration for the consumers actively. Along with the movement of Civil Code revision, opinions about lawmaking to unify other consumer laws, which were made as special laws, for the sake of systemicity and consistency have been suggested. The arguments about incorporating consumer law into the Civil Code are giving indication that the Korean consumer law, which corresponds to the tendency of foreign countries like Germany and Japan, would take a leap. It shows how normative the consumer law has become in Korea for the last 35 years compared to the early period of economic growth when the legislation of consumer law as a special law had faced strong oppositions. The urgent problems of consumer law are ① revision of Civil Code and legislation of unified consumer law ② revision of Product Liability Act ③ improving law of consumer finance and ④ supplementing the system of consumer group litigation and class action lawsuits. Now it reached a point to arrange the consumer law systematically which had split into parts by the simple expedient of legislating special laws as the result of administrative expediency.