제⋅개정내용을 통한 청소년기본법 변화 고찰

The Framework Act on Juveniles (the “Act”) plays a fundamental role in respect of the legislation concerning juveniles. Since its enactment in 1991, the Act has not properly and sufficiently addressed the essential matters as the fundamental act (i.e. the rights of juveniles and the principal policies to protect them) due to excessive coverage of trainings for juveniles. In consideration of the foregoing, the Act has been revised 14 times to attempt to overcome the position to recognize juveniles as passive ones subject to trainings and protection by incorporating certain items regulated under the Act into other laws (e.g. the Act on Juvenile Welfare Support, the Act on Juvenile Protection, the Act on the Juvenile Activity Promotion), especially in terms of rights, policies, facilities, instructors, organizations, welfare, etc. pertaining to juveniles. Despite such attempts, the Act seems inadequate to play as the fundamental act and needs to be further developed to explicitly positioning the Act as the fundamental act and to clearly include and show the goal and direction of juvenile policies recognizing juveniles as social, cultural and political subjects as well as basic rights related to juvenile. The purport of this paper is to understand and evaluate the developments of the Act throughout its 14 time revision.