Recent Preparatory Work for the Amendment of the Korean Civil Code

The Korean Civil Code (KCC) was promulgated on February 22, 1958 and became effective as ofJanuary 1, 1960. More than 40 years have now passed since the enactment of KCC. During that time, revisions were mainly made toBook 4 (Family) and Book 5 (Succession) of KCC on several occasions, including material and far-reaching amendments in 1977, 1991 and, most recently, in January of this year. But with respectto the first three Books, i.e., General Provisions (Allgemeiner Teil), Law of Property (Sachenrecht) and Law of Obligations (Schuldrecht), revisions of KCC itself have been infrequent and relatively minor. The preparatory work for the amendment to the first three Books of KCC began on February 1, 1999, when the Special Committee for the Civil Code Amendment (Civil Code Amendment Committee or Committee) was established as a subcommittee of the Legal Advisory Commission within the Ministry of Justice. After the Committee presented the tentative results of its discussionsand findings by announcing the Draft Amendment in November 2001, and after holding public hearings and reviewing opinions from experts in various fields, it recently wrapped up its discussions, the contents of which were promulgated as a Preliminary Announcement of Legislation on June 14, 2004. The author participated in the preparatory work as a member and chief secretary of the Committee. In this article, he presents an overview of the foregoing discussions and process to date and to present one possible point of view with respect to the significance of such amendment process. First, he briefly tracks the process of the work (Section II), provides an overview of the issues discussed during the work (Section III), and focuses on certain points in greater detail that he believes reveal the material characteristics of this preparatory work (Section IV). Lastly, he expresses some of my impressions and thoughts on the work (Section V)