소송증가는 계속될 것인가?: 제소율과 경제요인의 관계 분석

Contrary to past studies on the litigation increase in Korea, this essay asserts that the relation between litigation rate and economic factors such as Gross Domestic Product per capita is not a simple linear pattern but can be best fitted by a second degree polynomial equation, where the leading coefficient of GDP per capita is negative. That is to say, while litigation rate will increase in an early stage of GDP increase, it will switch to a decrease after passing an inflection point of a parabola. The long-term time-series data of Korean litigation rate for about sixty years after Korean War show almost simple linear increase fluctuating around GDP per capita curve. Analysis of panel data comprised of European countries plus Korea, Japan, and United States during the years from 2006 to 2012, however, shows the aforementioned pattern of polynomial equation, of which the inflection point has turned out to be 25,478 USD of GDP per capita. Similar pattern has also been confirmed with longitudinal data composed of litigation rates of Korean regional provinces since the year of 1985. In this case, the inflection point has been calculated to be about 30 million KRW of GDP per capita, not much distant from the result of international data. Besides economic factors, we failed to affirm statistically meaningful correlation between litigation rate and social structural indices such as urbanization rate. Despite the expectation of long-term decrease of litigation rate, it is recommended to keep the pace of increase in the number of judges and lawyers, as Korea is still one of those countries that have small number of legal professionals.