The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed the reform bill for the Commercial Act Part Ⅰ General Provisions and Ⅱ Commercial Activities on 21st April 2010 and the amended bill will take effect on 15th November 2010. The Commercial Act is a law that regulates the existence and the relationships of the enterprises that have the purpose of profit-making, is composed of five parts, such as General Provisions, Commercial Activities, Companies, Insurance, and Maritime Commerce, was enacted on January 20, 1962 as Act No. 1000, and entered into force on January 1, 1963. This Act has arrived at its present form as the result of being amended 17th times, but Part Ⅰ and Part Ⅱ have not been amended so frequently as Part Ⅲ Companies.
The aim of this Amendment is to change the old fashioned law into the modernization one. In order to modernize the Commercial Act, the Ministry of Justice had prepared the reform bill to newly created and developed commercial activities such as broadcasting and electronic transaction, and to stipulate legal relationships between parties in transactions in order to solve uncertain legal problems arising in new commercial activities such as lease, franchise, factoring. In addition, this bill had prepared to reduce liabilities of the overland carrier, to remove the special principle of the valuation of assets. But the Assembly of Legislation and Judiciary Committee amended the bill because they had a different view from that of the Ministry. They removed and amended the broadcasting section, the reducing the overland carrier's liabilities section ect.
On the ground of the above examination, I will discuss a problems for the modernization of the Commercial Activities Law such as deletion of basic commercial activities list of Commercial Act and stipulation of legal relationships between parties in commercial activities.