질병보험에 대한 보험계약법적 연구

Abstract

This study starts from the awareness that Korean Commercial Act is insufficient to regulate Sickness Insurance Contracts due to the fact that there are only two clauses concerning Sickness Insurance Contracts. Especially, Article 739-3 of Commercial Act says that Sickness Insurance Contracts are to regulated by the legal provisions concerning Life Insurance Contracts or Accident Insurance Contracts selectively. But, this clause seems inappropriate and unclear, because the characters of Accident Insurance Contracts are different from those of Life Insurance Contracts and the only standard to decide the provision applied to a specific Sickness Insurance Contract, “according to the nature of Sickness Insurance Contracts” in Article 739-3, is not a concrete and clear standard. With this critical mind, I aimed at making references for Korean Commercial Act amendment, as well as the interpretation of the current Korean Commercial Act. To accomplish these goals, I examined important provisions in the chapter of Life Insurance Contracts and Accident Insurance Contracts from the perspective of Sickness Insurance Contracts. Upon examining these inquiries with the critical mind, I conclude that the current system which classifies person insurance into three categories is desirable, but it is needed to change the Article 739-3 to a number of concrete and specific provisions. First, after classifying the Sickness Insurance into the Indemnifying Sickness Insurance and the Fixed Amount Sickness Insurance, Sickness Insurance for policyholder and Sickness insurance for third parties, Sickness Insurance that the insured is the policyholder and Sickness Insurance that the insured is not the policyholder, it is desirable to establish specific legal provisions for those insurance contracts, such as whether or not such insurance contracts are allowed. In addition, it was proper to precisely prescribe the reasons for exemption in the view of common points and differences between sickness insurance and life/accident insurance. As for insurance subrogation and double insurance, I propose to narrowly apply these institutions to the fixed amount sickness insurance, even though it is needed to divide the indemnifying sickness insurance and the fixed amount sickness insurance. I insist to make specific legislative acts on various issues in the sickness insurance contracts. This may help to reduce conflicts between the contracting parties and legal risks and social costs.