집합건물 관리단집회의 효율적 의사결정에 관한 검토 - 2025년 일본 구분소유법 대개정을 중심으로 -

This article examines the structural reform of decision-making mechanisms in condominium management meetings under the 2025 major amendment of Japan's Act on Building Unit Ownership(Tatemono no Kubun Shoyū tō ni kansuru Hōritsu), officially promulgated on May 30, 2025 and scheduled to take effect on April 1, 2026. The amendment constitutes one of the most sweeping overhauls of Japanese condominium law in recent decades, addressing entrenched institutional failures that have long impeded effective collective governance in aging residential buildings. Japan's condominium sector faces acute structural challenges: as of 2024, approximately 1.48 million condominium units are over forty years old, a figure projected to rise to approximately 4.83 million within twenty years. Compounding this physical deterioration is a pronounced demographic shift, with over fifty-five percent of households in buildings more than forty years old headed by individuals aged seventy or older. These trends have generated a growing population of owners who are either disengaged from building management or whose whereabouts have become entirely unknown — often due to inheritance disputes, unregistered transfers, or abandonment of ownership interest. Under the prior legal framework, such absentee and unlocatable owners were effectively treated as opponents of any proposed resolution, as their silence counted against the requisite supermajority thresholds, resulting in the chronic failure of management meetings to achieve quorum or pass essential resolutions. To address these failures, the 2025 amendment introduces three principal reforms. First, it establishes a judicial exclusion mechanism (joketsutei) under which owners whose identity or whereabouts cannot be ascertained — despite diligent investigation — may be excluded from the denominator used to calculate quorum and voting thresholds upon a court determination. This mechanism draws on analogous provisions introduced in the 2021 reform of the Civil Code governing co-ownership of land. Second, the amended Act adopts majority voting by attending owners(shussekisha tasūketsu) for ordinary resolutions, replacing the prior rule under which non-attending owners were treated as opponents. For special resolutions concerning common area alterations, a quorum of a majority of unit owners is required, with the resolution itself requiring approval by three-quarters of those present. Third, the amendment relaxes the supermajority threshold for reconstruction resolutions from four-fifths to three-quarters, but only where one of five objectively specified conditions — relating to seismic safety, fire safety, structural deterioration, sanitary deficiencies, or accessibility — is established. This conditionality is designed to prevent opportunistic use of the lower threshold by investment-oriented owners seeking to redevelop viable residential buildings for commercial gain. The article also examines legal and practical issues surrounding online management meetings, which gained significant momentum following the COVID-19 pandemic. While the 2025 amendment does not directly regulate online meetings, the 2021 revision of the Standard Management Rules provides a normative framework addressing identity verification, voting rights of remote participants, quorum calculation, and procedures for managing technical failures. A comparative perspective is offered through reference to Japan's 2020 Companies Act reform, which introduced electronic provision of general meeting materials, revealing both structural parallels and normative distinctions between corporate and residential community governance. In its final section, the article draws implications for Korean condominium law under the Jiphap Geonmul-beop(Act on the Ownership and Management of Aggregate Buildings). Korean law currently requires supermajority approval calculated against all unit owners — not merely those attending — creating a structural risk of decision-making paralysis where participation rates are low, particularly in commercially-oriented buildings. The article argues that Korea should consider: (i) introducing a judicially supervised mechanism for excluding owners with unknown whereabouts from quorum calculations; (ii) differentiating voting thresholds by resolution type, permitting attending-owner majorities for routine decisions while preserving higher thresholds for resolutions with significant proprietary consequences; and (iii) investing in the legal and technical infrastructure necessary to support electronic participation. Crucially, however, the article cautions that procedural efficiency must not come at the cost of democratic legitimacy. Japan's experience demonstrates that the tension between efficiency and legitimacy in condominium governance is not merely technical but deeply normative, requiring that the law serve not only the management of buildings, but the flourishing of the communities within them.