베트남의 국제민사사법공조 – 송달협약과 증거협약을 중심으로

“International judicial assistance in civil matters” refers to the cooperation between countries in order to serve documents across the border and to take evidence in other jurisdictions in relation to civil procedures. As service of documents and taking of evidence are the exercise of sovereignty in the civil law system countries, such as Korea and Vietnam, it must be done through cooperation between judicial authorities of respective countries. Therefore, international judicial assistance in civil matters has by and large been governed by treaties between states. The Convention of 15 November 1965 on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters("Service Convention”) and the Convention of 18 March 1970 on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters(“Evidence Convention”) drafted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law(“HCCH”) exemplify such multilateral treaties. With the increase of investment and trade by Korean companies in Vietnam and economic and social interaction between the two countries, the demand for judicial assistance between Korea and Vietnam is expected to increase in the future. Korea and Vietnam had conducted working-level negotiations to sign a bilateral treaty on judicial assistance in civil matters, but such effort did not bear fruit. In accordance with the international integration policy of the Party and the state to strengthen international cooperation in the judicial field and to continuously sign treaties on legal assistance, Vietnam became a member state of the HCCH in 2013 and acceded to the Service Convention in 2016, and to the Evidence Convention in 2020. As Vietnam became the contracting state of the Service Convention and the Evidence Convention following Korea, the legal basis for international judicial assistance in civil matters between the two countries has now been established. This article explains the Vietnamese system of international judicial assistance in civil matters. The specific order of discussion is as follows. Chapter Ⅱ overviews Vietnam’s current status of international judicial assistance in civil matters. In chapter Ⅲ, the author describes the regulations on judicial assistance in civil matters prescribed in the Vietnamese domestic laws, especially the Law on Judicial Assistance. Chapters Ⅳ and V review the Vietnamese judicial assistance system according to the Service Convention and the Evidence Convention, focusing on the declarations made by the Vietnamese government upon acceding to each Convention. In Vietnam, treaties take precedence over domestic laws, but there is no priority between bilateral treaties and multilateral treaties. However, the Vietnamese government recommends applying bilateral treaties first in the practice of judicial assistance. As Korea and Vietnam each made the reservations to multiple provisions while acceding to the Service Agreement and the Evidence Agreement, the scope of judicial assistance was considerably diminished. In the future, the two countries need to ease these restrictions by signing a bilateral treaty on judicial assistance in civil matters. In Chapter Ⅵ, the author suggests key features to be included in the potential Korea-Vietnam treaty.