동북아 경제중심 국가에 따른 프랜차이즈 (가맹사업) 법제 정비 방향

Abstract

Korea has shown rapid growth in the franchise related industry over a very short period of time. However, such rapid development increased the number of immoral franchisor, who provided false or exaggerated information, and others that used their trade status to force unfair negotiations, which in result increased the amount damages incurred to numerous franchisee. In order to regulate such activities, the Korea Fair Franchise Business Act was established and enforced, but it wasn’t very effective. Many revisions were made to the legislation to improve its effectiveness, and in 2007, a major revision was made and applied to the legislation. The revised content extended the duration of consideration for providing the franchise offering circular to make the franchise offering circular policy even more practical. Also, an the franchise offering circular registration policy was newly established. Furthermore, franchise payment deposit policy was newly established, the franchise contract renewal and termination procedure of the franchisor was made stricter, and other policies were established to strengthen and provide protection for the franchisee and their business area. Through such revisions, the distrust issue of franchise was resolved to some extent, and it secured the effectiveness of the legislation. However, the Fair Franchise Business Act is still very far from the reality of negotiation characteristics, and it is yet to provide practical protection for the franchisees Therefore, this research proposed the following improvement measures for the current problems of the Fair Franchise Business Act, especially regarding the range of franchise payment, consideration duration of the information exposure report, and the renewal and termination of franchise contracts. First of all, regarding the range of franchise payments, the applicable range of the Fair Franchise Business Act must be made clearer by excluding the damage compensation security from the franchise payment range. Secondly, regarding the consideration duration for the franchise offering circular, the duration for consideration should be reduced when considering the fact that there are various routes for the prospect franchisee to access information regarding the franchise offering circular of the franchisor, such as the ‘franchise business negotiation homepage’ operated by the Fair Trade Commission, and also through the internet and other various mediums. Especially, in the case of receiving advise from a legal attorney, it is necessary to reduce the duration to 1 or 2 days in order to establish a swift contract agreement. Also, regarding the termination of franchise contracts, the termination grace period should be reduced from the perspective of securing the effectiveness of the control measures regarding the franchisees.