인격권의 법리검토와 입법제안

A Study on Legal Review of Personality Right and Legislative Proposal

In view of current Korean laws and regulations concerning personality right, it is found that Article 10 of the Korean Constitution provides “the right to pursue human respect, values and happiness”; Article 17 of said Constitution provides “confidence of privacy” to be protected as a part of basic right; and our Korean Criminal Law has provisions on protection of one s own personality. On the other hand, the Korean Civil Law accepts just passively that violation of personal right is an illegal act and involves the right to claim for damages. In 2002, public discussions on the revision of our civil law were greatly controversial due to hot arguments for and against new legislation of personality right and protection thereof. As a result, authorities concerned came to a consensus that the personality right shall be protected as a legal right in statutory form, in the light of its ideological and practical consequence, but their consensus still exposed a limitation, because legal means for content or protection of personality right shall be determined by judicial precedence or hypotheses. The recent inauguration of the Civil Law Revision Council means a sign to open up a ground for follow-up discussions. From this starting point, it is advisable that the authorities concerned should not overlook frequent violations of other s personality right (right of likeness or portrait, privacy right, etc) any longer, with a focus on relevant legislation.