소비자계약과 소비자보호

Consumer Contract and Consumer Protection

Development in science and technology and economic growth led to diverse and complicated types and contents of goods and services, which drastically increases the possibilities that consumers lacking information and judgment will suffer damages, which in turn gradually increases the necessity of protecting consumers from consumer contracts. There is a global legislative movement to introduce a new concept of consumer contract and incorporate special types of trade into civil law or broaden the target base of consumer protection based on the validity of contract to all the transactions taking place between consumer and business. Some advanced nations have been improving their legislations by building their own consumer contract legislations. Germany, for instance, has revised civil law to incorporate major concepts related to consumers into civil code, while France as a comprehensive nation legislating Code de la Consommation, and Japan building its own consumer contract law. Contrary to the advanced nations which pursue integrated legislation of sonsumer contract laws, Korea has adopted individual legislation, thus differentiates the stipulation of consumer contract laws according to their own purposes, which in turn may weaken consumers' understanding of the legislation and its effectiveness as well. This leads to restricted protection of consumers, due to potential confusion raised while complying with or implementing the regulations, when individually applied principles or standards vary in accordance with the nature of consumer contract. We have been approaching consumer issues in terms of administrative regulation so far. But the need to integrate individual consumer contract laws is rising in order to enhance the understanding of consumer contract legislation and the effectiveness of the regulation while responding to global trend of consumer protection. On how to integrate the patchwork of individual consumer contract laws, a comprehensive general law instead of civil law is considered more appropriate as (1) civil law regulates cases with the view that both consumers and enterprisers are equal, and (2) When a case calls for administrative or jurisdictional regulation, it is hard to respond if the laws are integrated into a civil code.