민사소송에서 재판청구권 보장과 개인정보 보호 ─일본의 민사소송에서 가정폭력피해자 주소의 보호방안을 중심으로─

Article 163 of the Civil Procedure Act of Korea was amended on July 11, 2023, by Act No. 19516, in order to prevent the deterrence of the right to trial due to concerns that personal information, such as an individual's address, may be exposed through access to litigation records, particularly in cases involving crime victims. The amendment aims to practically safeguard the right to trial for individuals who are effectively unable to exercise this right due to concerns about potential harm to their life or physical well-being. However, this revised provision assumes the situation where an individual, whose life or physical safety is at risk, is the plaintiff in a lawsuit. There remains a legislative gap regarding the protection of personal information for individuals who are at risk of harm to their life or physical safety and are defendants in such cases. Even if there are concerns that a defendant might face retaliatory crimes or other risks to their life or physical safety, current legal provisions do not prevent the defendant, as a victim, from having their resident registration records accessed and used to obtain their address in order to file a lawsuit. Furthermore, if the law were to uniformly block the acquisition of address information for filing lawsuits in cases where there are concerns for the defendant's life or physical safety, in order to protect the defendant from retaliatory crimes, it could effectively prohibit all lawsuits involving victims and potentially infringe upon the right of criminal perpetrators and others to trial for judicial redress. The right to trial is a fundamental right guaranteed to all individuals. While it is important to ensure the practical protection of the right to trial for individuals whose life or physical safety is at risk, it is also necessary to avoid uniformly restricting the exercise of this right solely due to concerns about potential harm to life or physical well-being. The risk of harm to life or physical safety typically arises when an individual's address is publicly disclosed. Therefore, in civil litigation, there is a need to carefully design protective measures for the addresses of the parties involved, taking into account the balance between safeguarding the right to trial, protecting personal information, and adhering to the principle of open trials. In this context, a comparative legal study of Japan’s system of public management of address information and measures to protect address data in civil litigation could offer valuable insights. However, Japan’s legal framework also has limitations, and in order to prevent harm caused by the exposure of personal information in civil lawsuits, it may be necessary to limit the information submitted to only what is essential for the case.