ABSTRACT

Volume of consumer credit transactions have been sharply increasing for past ten years and it caused significant economic and social problems in Korea. Some borrowers ended up with bearing huge unexpected finance charges and defaulting on a debt obligation. In this connection, consumer credit protection and controls on unfairness of a consumer credit transaction draw much attention in academic circles in Korea. Under the Korean law, pre-contractual disclosure of consumer credit terms and limit on the maximum interest rate have been playing a very important role in relation to consumer credit protection. However, it is generally said that controls on the consumer credit transactions should be enhanced to offer consumers a higher standard of protection. Particularly, a right of withdrawal in relation to the consumer finance has not been introduced under the Korean law. Consequently, a consumer is not able to terminate a consumer finance transaction without paying a significant amount of prepayment fees. In addition, a borrower experiencing financial difficulties due to unforseen hardship does not have a right to request adjustment of the terms of a consumer credit contract under the Korean law. Given that these rights are considered essential for the consumer protection in many countries, it will be desirable to introduce them into the Korean law. Additionally, from a comparative law perspective, many countries legislated a general act which uniformly regulates consumer credit transactions. For example, if a transaction falls under a consumer credit, it will be regulated by the general consumer credit protection act regardless of who the lender is. However, Korea still has a lender-based regulation system and a different set of regulations is applied to a consumer credit transaction depending upon the type of the financial institution (i.e., a bank or a credit card company). This lender-based regulation system is apt to create a loophole and causes repetitive legislation of same provisions in different laws. In this connection, legislation of a general act uniformly governing consumer credit transactions will be a more efficient way to protect consumers.

KEYWORD

consumer credit, control on unfair terms of a consumer credit contract, pre-contractual disclosure of credit terms, finance charge, right of withdrawal, hardship

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