Recently within many administrative agencies have been instituted official dispute resolution mechanism. Can we say that new area of administrative function is being developed, which belonged to traditional judicial function? Before evaluating this phenomenon comprehensively, we need to verify whether the various dispute resolution mechanisms share common purposes and standards. This paper inspects one of the examples: dispute resolution mechanism of the Korea Communications Commission(KCC).
KCC, as a sectoral regulator in the area of broadcasting and communication industries, provides dispute resolution services for the legal conflicts between communication service providers each other and consumers. But the specified area of disputes under the Telecommunications Business Act are involved with the enforcement of the specific regulation by the Act. One is the strict liability of telecommunications service providers for damages incurred to consumers. The other is the obligation under the ex-ante competition regulation system to make agreement to permit interconnection and share facilities and informations with other providers. Though the legal nature of such an agreement is private contract. it can be enforced by public regulatory system for it is required by the statute, But traditional regulatory tools are not effective methods to directly enforce private enterprises to make an important business contract as the government wishes.
The dispute resolution mechanism of the KCC can be seen as an regulatory enforcement tool for the interconnection obligation. It is better approach than to command directly to permit interconnection or to agree to specific conditions for interconnection both for promoting economic freedom of telecommunication industries and for assuring the speedy and fair interconnection agreement. But the present design of dispute resolution mechanism of the KCC is not effective enough to free of criticism. The FCC's complaints procedure and ADR scheme for enforcing interconnection obligation can be model for the reform of KCC mechanism. In addition to general dispute resolution procedures, it need to develop the tailored procedures for consumer disputes and interconnection disputes.