Today's product circulation structure is that the products from mass-production are sold with images through advertisement in TV, newspapers, and magazines and consumed in mass. As these uniformed products are sold in mass throughout the country and the selling places are such easily accessible ones as retailers, supermarkets, and agencies. customers generally don't directly purchase the products from the company which produces, manufactures, or distributes, but do just with trust in the company or the product.
Under this structure of mass production, mass sales, and mass consumption, those products of reduced cost through mass production and standardized quality are sold in large scale distribution channels. and so it is not likely that all products are perfect. In case a customer is damaged from the defect in a product, he/she can rightfully demand a damage compensation to the manufacturer. Especially, damage by a defect good is such a damage to life, body, and asset, and the range is broad and severe, thus the best way is to prevent it in advance. Nevertheless, when a damage happens ex post facto, it is necessary to seek for a remedy.
But, under today's product distribution structure, customers generally purchase goods without direct contract with the manufacturer. In this case, if the distributor/seller is called to account for the damage and the compensation is smoothly processed, there might not be a big trouble. but if the damaged customer is not enough and satisfactorily compensated, or the seller/agent evades or denies the responsibility on the event on the ground that they do only selling of the product, the customer can not help thinking over the problems and the method of damage compensation. Like this, when a customer calls the manufacturer or the seller who is not in a direct contract relation with the customer, remedy action for illegal behavior was first considered in the past, but now, with the enactment of Products Liability Act (Law Number 6109, newly legislated on January 12, 2000), overall problems resident in the present civil laws can be overcome to speculate manufacturer's compensation responsibility for the damage by the defect of good manufactured, and thus an institutional tool to secure the protection of victim, improve people's living stability, and contribute to a healthy development of economy was prepared.
This Product Responsibility Act has been rooted as a global standard that many countries over the world are already implementing. In the present circumstance that the world is integrating into a market named global village, domestic enterprises are experiencing huge amount of compensation lawsuits under the application of overseas strict Product responsibility act, while domestic customers have not been rescued from damages because of no preparation of domestic law when they were damaged to life and body by the overflowing overseas defect goods. Considering these problems, this Product Responsibility Act is expected to have some positive effects including i) strengthening of product safety, ii) intensification of customer protection, iii) buildup of the competitiveness of enterprises. For the enterprises, product safety plans become the major concern in adminstration, which will lead the enterprises to perform stable production and sales competition, while customers get to select and use safe products, which drives the enterprises in product responsibility to strengthen their competitiveness. Recall system protects in advance the customers from any likely damage from defect goods, while Product Responsibility plays the function of indirectly securing customer safety through rescue of ex post facto customer damage.
As the result, Product Responsibility Act allows to faithfully perform customer protection in case there is any customer damage from defect goods, make the criteria of dispute settlement explicit by taking defect as the responsibility requirement, and provide dispute settlement with a clue other than trial. Consequently, from the aspect of substantive law. Product Responsibility Act has a social function of facilitating dispute settlement, besides the function of damage compensation.
On the contrary, it can be predicted that the enactment of Product Responsibility Act will bring about elevation of customers' critical mind and consequent increase in the number of customers' making a claim to product trouble to give direct impact to the party concerned, the enterprises, and cause some increase in the cost of manufacture, waste of human resources, delay of development of new products, and deterioration of enterprise image. Additionally, responsibility for product safety will be more stern and thus there might be increase in the cost for safe product and insurance cost of product responsibility insurance, all which can generate a new cost burden and suppress enterprise's profit. Introduction of recall system can also give a twofold cost burden to enterprises.
With these critical mind, in this article it was intended to discuss just the fundamental theories centering on the interpretation of the Product Responsibility Act that was enacted on January 12 in 2000, due to the space limitations. There are many unclear notions in the interpretation of the Act though, they have not been enough addressed. Thus, centering on the 8 provisions of the Product Responsibility Act, this article discussed the theoretical basis that present in the Act.
[1] 이른바 제조물책임이란 제조물에 통상적으로 기대되는 안전성을 결여한 결함으로 인하여 생명, 신체나 제조물 그 자체 외의 다른 재산에 손해가 발생한 경우에 제조업자 등에게 지우는 손해배상책임이고, 제조물에 상품적합성이 결여되어 제조물 그 자체에 발생한 손해는 제조물책임이론의 적용 대상이 아니다.