환경오염피해의 구제에서 민사책임법과 보험의 상호관계 및 그 시사점

Abstract

Recently modern civil liability law on environmental damage has been characterized by the changes introducing the new liability rules modifying traditional legal rules and compulsory insurance. These changes came on stage early in 1969 International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage (CLC), and have been introduced in a number of domestic liability law system on environmental pollution damage. Even some differences in specified aspects, domestic environmental liability statues are mostly common in that they have been designed to protect victims of environmental damage through stipulating strict liability, reversed burden of proof or the assumption for causal relationship, and financial limits on liability. In addition to them, compulsory insurance requirement which mandates potential responsible parties to purchase an environmental liability insurance policy has become an essential constituent of these environmental liability statues. The Korean Act on the Compensation and Remedy for Environmental Pollution Damage 2014 also has introduced the above common elements. During an evolving framework for a legal regime on environmental liability, the new liability rules for the interests of victims and the concept of insurability for the interests of insurers have been developed, affecting each other. It is important to harmonize these conflict of interests in order to enforce the environmental liability law successfully. Therefore this paper firstly aims to examine the interrelationship between the main principles of environmental liability and insurability of environmental pollution risk. And then based on the implications from the inquiries, try to propose some legislative and institutional recommendations for achieving effective remedy for environmental pollution damage.