버스準公營制에서의 運送費用과 運送收入金의 法的 性質

Abstract

It has been 5 years since the bus semi-public system was introduced and carried out in metropolitan cities and most major cities. Therefore, the time is ripe to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the semi-public system and systematically supplement it for more efficient operations. In particular, while the bus semi-public system has strengthened its public nature in order to guarantee citizens’ convenience and safety by taking measures such as substantially redeeming bus route rights, bus transportation operators need to strengthen their ethical standards in regards to the management of buses because the current structure requires the deficit created by the total transportation expenses being greater than total transportation earnings to be financially supported by taxes paid by citizens. However, as the semi-public system is an unfamiliar system that differs from the pre-existing private system, it is true that there have been many mistakes in the course of implementing this system. There have been many instances of bus transportation operators handling and managing transportation expenses and earnings as they did under the private system and having the evaded sums redeemed and being criminally prosecuted for embezzlement as well as civic organizations’ criticism of the waste of taxpayers’ precious money. In this regards, the demand for supplementing the semi-public system is currently growing. It is meaningful to analyze transportation expenses and earnings precedents and examine their legal nature as one way of proposing a supplementary direction for the semi-public system. We have examined that through transportation expenses precedents, transportation expenses have a legal nature as subsidies, and they can be redeemed by the authorities as well as be the grounds for being penalized for embezzlement, if they are not used for specified purposes. According to transportation earnings precedents, it was determined that transportation earnings are jointly owned by bus transportation operators, and are under the management of the bus operators’ union that was established and operated by operators. Therefore, if bus transportation operators commit fraud with transportation card earnings and cash earnings and arbitrarily use them, it can be redeemed as embezzled funds and can be criminally prosecuted as embezzlement. Nevertheless, unlike court precedents until now, prosecutors have stated that the borrowed nature of property cannot be recognized and was not prosecuted in the past. In addition, there have been court precedents that determine that surcharge regulations that state that 100 times the amount of fraud must levied as surcharge are not entirely in agreement with breach of contract legal principles, and must be supplemented. As examined in this paper, the legal nature of transportation expenses and incomes under the semi-public system needs to be systematically supplemented according to the precedents of the court, as it is a basic factor in operating the semi-public system. In particular, the semi-public system is a system that demands a high standard of moral and ethical behavior, thus, authorities, bus transportation operators, and stakeholders must be fully aware of the legal nature in precedents and reform management and operational behavior to secure a level of ethics that meets citizens’ demands. I hope that the semi-public system experiment will be successfully completed so that Korean bus management can obtain a worldwide reputation.