宗敎團體의 紛爭과 財産歸屬에 관한 硏究

Abstract

These days our society has religious believers of 24.79 million people accounting for 53.1% of our total population, of them Buddhists occupy 22.8% of the total, Christians do 18.3%, and Catholics do 10.9%, so our society can be said to be a diversified one that the three major religion take up 98% of the entire religious population. The religious believers can lead only their religious life by mental life following religious creeds on an individual level, but furthermore they often form many types of groups and act through them socially. Consequently, a lot of conflicts can take place concerning the religious bodies, and those emerging as the legal disputes of religious entities include, the issues on the appointment of a man of cloth having the representative right of the organization, its division and resultant property reversion. Hence, as a result of looking over the dispute and property reversion of a religious organization, the legal character of a Buddhist temple doesn't need to eliminate the existence of a pure non-corporation, but in general, it should be regarded as a special entity of in-between character having a non-corporate corporation and a non-corporate foundation. Thus, for the case of pure non-corporate corporation, the property reversion type of a temple can be said to be collectively owned, but that for most temples combined with a corporate factor and a property factor should be independently owned as that of a non-corporate foundation. Most of our religious groups have been handed down from abroad, and since then, they have their own characteristics through he creed, organization and operation by their peculiar group. So it will not be desirable to apply the legal logic of corporation regulations on the civil code as they are since those provisions are those applicable to all kinds of groups. This can be comprehended from Japanese case holding back the application of the civil code provisions to religious entities at the time of enactment, then establishing the law of religious corporation and operating it. From our situation having such special law, as the dispute of religious entities can not be denied, so it will be necessary to analogically apply the provision of a corporation on the civil code given the character of such a religious entity, come up with a norm through the leading cases, and on a long term basis, reflect the realities of a religious group and consider enact a special law fit for the religious group.