소비자계약의 유형과 법적 규제

The status of the consumer contract and its development

As the result of industrialization, the age of mass-production and massconsumption has come. Consequently, a premise which contract parties stand at the equal status has broken. Both parties of the contract divided into two parts, that is, the enterprise and consumer as the strong and the weak economically. A variety of transactions and the change of commerce means make it difficult to apply the former contract law. For the benefit of consumer, the modern sale contracts, for example, selling on an installment basis, door to door sales, call sales, E-commerce and M-commerce, need to be dealt according to new condition. There are two ways of the legal treatment for the consumer contract. One is to make use of the existing civil law, precedents. The other is to enact the consumer contract law as a special law or to take in the consumer criteria in the civil code if the existing law can not afford the legal solution for the consumer. The terminology of the consumer contract is not a common one in Korea. Besides, the terminology of consumer contract is not used in the present Acts, is not familiar with lawyer. The consumer contract, typically, means the contract between the enterprise and the consumer. It encompasses the goods and the service treated like goods in a narrow sense. The legal character of the consumer contract is a civil contract, which needs to be treated specially because of the characteristic of the consumer. It has the dissymmetry between the enterprise and the consumer in many points which are information, technology etc. It also closes a contract with a type of stipulation. It can be seen as a adhesion contract. Consumer contract can be divided into the contract content and contract method. The former are sales type, service offer type, consumer credit type, facilities offer type, The latter are online trade type, off line trade type. For the time being, we can apply the Consumer Protection Act about consumer contract. However, it has not a provision related to consumer contract. So, we have to find the resolution from special laws. To solve the legal disputes between the enterprise and the consumer, we need to make the Consumer contract Act like Japan did in 2000. Otherwise, We wlii have to accept the consumer contract clause into the civil code.