행정정보의 공개에 대한 판례의 최근 동향에 대한 연구 - 비공개대상정보를 중심으로 -

The function of the administration locates in the operation of the state for the public welfare. To achieve this goal the administration needs to gather many informations. Therefore the administration and its agencies file up various informations. Among these informations some of them can be distributed for the people, who need them. We live in a society of information due to the development of information and communication technology. In this society the people can get much benefit out of information. To release these informations for the public might stimulate the public benefits and also make better society. This trend would be coincide with the creative economy, which is the key motto of the current korean president, Park Guen-Hye. In a sense the administrative informations would be gathered by means of tax or burden of the people. Thus the administrative agencies should not consider them as their own property but the property of the people. The administrative agencies and their staffs have to contribute to create public wealth and try to actively to disclose them to support the people. In this meaning it might be legitimate to give the people the right to access to the administrative informations. Because the disclosure of the informations should contribute to the welfare, we have above all to check, whether the disclosure of the informations might bring side effects. Sometimes there are conflicts between disclosure and concealment. This kind of weighing process happens all the time for the disclosure of the informations. This weighing process would start also in the interpretation of the legal conditions of § 9 in the korean information freedom act, which regulates the informations, which are not to be disclosed. The fundamental direction of the korean supreme court for the interpretation of the above clause should be continued further, because it tries to enlarge the disclosure of the administrative informations that it orders the agency to disclose the asked informations even in part, if the seperated part can be disclosed. Finally, for the disclosure of the administrative informations the interpretation of the legal conditions is very important and it depends on mainly the interests assessment or evaluation. Therefore it is to be requested that our korean courts develop proper evaluation elements and their right values, so that the process for the information disclosure might become more rational and objective.