가맹사업거래 분쟁의 실효적 해결방안

Abstract

In South Korea, the Fair Transactions in Franchise Business Act was established in May 2002. The Act has been amended several times to adopt the information disclosure statement registration system, franchise deposit scheme, etc. with a view to fair franchise business transactions. But as the franchise business market has grown rapidly, franchisee damages have also expanded by unfair activities abusing favorable transactional position of franchiser and so forth, increasing franchise business-related disputes each year. In the country, disputes related to franchise business are to be mediated by the Franchise Business Transaction Dispute Settlement Council. The legal effect of its mediation is no more than the contract of compromise under the civil code. Thus, if the franchiser does not follow the mediated resolution on the voluntary basis, the franchisee should file a suit to court again. In this situation, sometimes franchisers, to avoid the corrective measures or recommendations of Fair Trade Commission even temporarily, accept the Council mediation result and gain some more time. In this study, it was noted that such franchise business-related disputes are mostly small-scale cases for less than KRW 10 million and hardly led to a full formal trial. In most of the cases, franchisees are micro-scale owners and in unfavorable position to access information and many others compared to franchisers. Given this aspect, franchise business-related disputes, in its nature, are almost similar to customer disputes. Therefore, it is emphasized in this study that, as the medication by Consumer Dispute Settlement Council is recognized as equally effective as judicial settlement, the Council mediation should be made equally effective to judicial settlement to better protect the franchisees. To this end, the Franchise Business Act needs to be amended to ensure the independence and neutrality of the Council organization, mediation procedural fairness and prudence and others. It is also desirable to change the Council name into settlement committee. In the franchise contracts between a franchiser and franchisee, mediation provisions need to be inserted therein so that disputes can be resolved through mediation.