South Korea's Electronic Commerce Transaction Act poses a risk of joint liability for platforms

It is reported that in South Korea, in the revision of the Electronic Commerce Transaction Act, which is jointly responsible by online platform operators and resident companies, it was pointed out that "the platform actually has the danger of unlimited joint and several liability."

Professor Seo Jong-hee of the Graduate School of Law at Yonsei University made the above remarks at a joint academic conference of the Fair Trade Commission and the Korea Consumer Law Association held at the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 6th .

According to the amendment to the Electronic Commerce Transactions Act announced by the Fair Trade Commission, online platform operators should confirm the name, address, and telephone number of the legal person and representative of the resident enterprise and inform consumers.

If the information is not provided or its content is inconsistent with the facts, the platform shall bear joint and several liability for the consumer losses caused by the mistakes of the settled enterprises. However, in order to avoid losses to consumers , special care should be taken.

Professor Seo said: "Even if the platform operator confirms the information of the settled companies and provides consumers with legal obligations, there is actually a risk of assuming joint liability. There are certain limitations for platform operators to confirm the identity information of sellers, but the extent to which the platform must pay attention is completely unpredictable. "

Some in the IT industry and academia are concerned that the burden on platforms such as Naver , 11th Street, and Coupang will increase significantly because companies entering stores can deliberately fill in incorrect information.

Kim Do-nyeon, a researcher at the Korea Consumer Agency, said : “The discussion should not be based on joint liability, but on the responsibility of the platform for not fulfilling its duty of care during the transaction. Wouldn’t it be good if specific conditions for duty of care were formulated?”

The FTC stated that relevant clauses were formulated to prevent the practice of shifting all responsibility for consumer losses to the resident companies on the grounds that the online platforms were not parties to the contract during this period.

At the academic conference that day, relevant speeches were made on the purpose and main contents of the overall revision of the Electronic Commerce Transaction Act (Seok Dong-soo, head of the Electronic Transaction Division of the Fair Trade Commission), and the focus of controversy related to online platform operators in the overall revision (Kim Se-jun, professor at Gyeonggi University).

South Korea

E-commerce

consumer