滿洲國民法의 우리 法制史的 意義

만주민법의 자리매김에 관한 의문

1958년에 제정되어 1960년부터 시행된 우리 민법(이하 “신민법”)은 독일, 프랑스, 스위스, 영국, 중국, 일본, 만주 등 7개국의 입법례를 조사⋅검토하여 만들었다는 것이 공식적인 설명이라 할 수 있다. 그러나 신민법은 실질적으로 구민법을 수정하는 방식으로 이루어졌으며, 구민법과 달라진 조문들은 만주민법에서 같은 예를 찾을 수 있다. 그리하여 신민법이 제정된 후 다소 시간이 경과한 후에, 극히 일부이지만, 신민법이 만주민법을 모방하였다는 비판이 나왔다. 그러나 여전히 대부분의 표준적인 민법해설서에서는 만주민법에 대해 우리 민법에서의 연혁적 지위를 적극적으로 인정하고 있지 않고 있다. 필자는 구체적인 조문의 예시를 통해 우리 민법이 만주민법에 거의 전적으로 의존하여 입법되었음을 논증하고 결론적으로 만주민법을 우리 민법의 繼受史에 정식으로 자리매김하는 것이 옳다는 생각을 밝히고자 한다.

The current Korean Civil Law was newly enacted in 1958. The official explanation of Korean Civil Code’s history according to the civil law society of Korea was that it was legislated by the reference to the civil laws of seven civil law countries, i.e. Germany, France, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, China and Manchuria. But some civil law students presented a dissenting view that Korean Civil Law was modelled after the Manchurian Civil Code and a considerable number of civil law students seem to support this argument. The author of this article also agrees with this argument and argues that the Korean civil law society should officially accept Machurian Civil Code as the main source of Korean Civil Law. To prove this argument, the author compared the provisions of Korean Civil Law which were newly introduced by the 1958 legislation, with the identical provisions of the Manchurian Civil Code, article by article. By doing such, the author proves that almost all new provisions of Korean Civil Law have their origins in the Manchurian Civil Code. But the author does not underestimate this imitation. Instead, the author highly esteems the legislators of the Korean Civil Law for their choice of the Machurian Civil Code as a model in drafting Korean Civil Law, according to the following reason. Manchurian Civil Code was based on the Japanese Civil Code. Many errors and defects had been found in the Japanese Civil Code through its forty years’ application. Abundant theories to compensate for these drawbacks had been developed by eminent civil law scholars who have deeply studied German civil law and its theories. And the drafters of the Manchurian Civil Code codified this law on the basis of these theories so that they could make a new civil law that avoided all the drawbacks of Japanese Civil Code. As Japanese Civil Code was also applied in Korea during the colony age, Japanese Civil Code can be said to be the civil law of Korea at that time. In other words, the Manchurian Civil Code can be said considered the model that led to the highly improved Korean Civil Law of today.