As national income has increased and the quality of life has risen, travel is no longer the exclusive privilege of the upper class. Now, travel in various forms is a part of life for all people. As travel becomes prevalent and legal problems related t...
As national income has increased and the quality of life has risen, travel is no longer the exclusive privilege of the upper class. Now, travel in various forms is a part of life for all people. As travel becomes prevalent and legal problems related to travel occur with greater frequently, protection for travelers is gaining recognition as a social issue.
At present, most travel contracts are made in the form of general terms and conditions ("GTC"). However, since no law mandates that a GTC for the Transportation of Passengers contain compulsory terms, and since it is enough that the GTC not conflict with the Act to Regulate GTCs, it is possible to say that the GTC is devoid of core terms. Accordingly, in the event a dispute occurs in relation to a travel contract, consumers are left unprotected by the current GTC for the Transportation of Passengers.
The current Tourism Promotion Act requires travel businesses to have available either insurance, mutual aid, or a business security deposit in order to protect travelers. However, since penalties for non-compliance with such requirements are applied only after an infraction of the rules, rather than demanding that all such requirements be met before a travel business may be registered in the first place, it is in fact impossible for this legal instrument to remedy any damages arising out of travel accidents which occur after the start of travel and prior to the application of administrative penalties.
There are opposing theories in relation to the legal nature of the travel contract. This study considers it an untypical contract similar to a service contract, for the following reasons: (1) the travel contract is similar to a continuous contractual relationship in that it continuously requires individual services for a certain period and the delivery time of service is very important; (2) most travel businesses do not directly provide travel service, but provide it through outsourced individual service providers; and (3) the necessity to protect travelers is urgent since prepayment is allowed before travel begins.
A positive analysis was made using the SPSS 10.0 package, a statistical analysis program. Also, a chi-square test to find out the correlations of the difference between the expected frequency and actual frequency by using the nominal data between the travelers' group and the group who haven't experienced damages from travel, or the traveler and travel business, and a t-Test to verify whether the average of the two independent groups statistically shows a significant difference or not, were conducted, respectively.
The result of reviewing the provisions related to travel contract from the proposed amendments to the Civil Law shows: (1) the notions of related terms are not clear-cut due to the absence of definitions; (2) there are no provisions about substitutive participation; (3) there are no provisions about increase or decrease of travel costs; (4) nonetheless the provisions about the travel business' warranty obligation, the law fails to clearly specify the differences between the liability for default and the warranty obligation; and (5) the provisions about travel business' return obligation are very restrictive, compared to the precedent (Supreme Court 98Da25061). Moreover, it is not easy for the law to sufficiently govern the complicated and various situations arising out of travel. Accordingly, this study proposes "Travel Contract Act" as a special law and summarizes it as follows: Article 1 "Purpose", Article 2 "Definitions", Article 3 "Obligations", Article 4 "Assignment of Contract", Article 5 "Travel Costs", Article 6 "Change of Travel Costs", Article 7 "Requirements for Change of Travel Terms and Conditions; Payment of Costs", Article 8 "Tour Guidebook", Article 9 "Provision of Information", Article 10 "Termination Prior to Start of Travel", Article 11 "Termination After Start of Travel", Article 12 "Indemnification", Article 13 "Travel Business' Warranty", Article 14 "Protest", and Article "Financial Guaranty".
Since the positive analysis in this thesis only focuses damages, there is a limitation of research. Further studies are required in order to reflect the proposed act to the legislation by adding positive analyses according to regions and sexes.