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Whether the punitive damages system under the current law, the amount of damages determined by the law, and the specific legislative method from the perspective of economic law are appropriate in comparison with foreign legislations and its implications, mainly in the United States and China, we have examined several legal issues so far and proposed more desirable solutions as follows\\\;

Firstly, as for the legislative method, the punitive damages system will function well when we accept the legislation based on its respective special field, rather than accepting a general law such as the Civil Law, creating a separate special law such as the Punitive Damages Act, or relying on individual special laws. To ensure that the characteristics of each field are properly reflected in the consumer area, food health area, personal information area, financial area, fair trade area such as subcontracting, etc., the each “Basic Law for applicable field” should determine and legislate it in consideration of the characteristics of the system and the effectiveness of the system.

Secondly, it is desirable to unify the types of sanctions for each field, such as cancellation of orders, prohibition of returns, and prohibition of reductions, in consideration of the specificity of each field, and to maintain consistency within the fields to be considered.

Thirdly, with respect to the level of sanctions, the level of compensation is maintained at about three times the level of the amount of compensation currently being introduced, but the penal provisions should be abolished as much as possible in order to maintain the criminal principles. In this regard, it would be difficult to predict that the court will admit more than three times the current standard in proportion to this, even if only the multiple of the punitive damages criteria is raised to 10 times.

Fourthly, it is more likely that the wrongdoings have not been released, rather than the reason that the sanctions are weak. Requesting for dispute settlement or filing a report leads to a break in the transaction, which is likely to pass the transaction to another customer, and it can be a problem between the trading competitors. Therefore, all businesses with certain requirements are obligated to carry out subcontracting or other transactions within a certain framework. It is thought that it would be an effective countermeasure to disclose on everything needed.

Dongwon Lee
(Professor, School of Law, Chungbuk National University)

[Korean Economic Law Review, Vol. 20-1, April 2021]