Export of legal systems

Export of legal systems (법제의 수출/法制輸出) refers to the provision of legal systems to a foreign country at its request.

So far Korea has been unprecedentedly good at export goods. But now Korean government is increasingly interested in export its legal systems as exemplified by:
 * Green growth legislation on the strategy formation and organization to Cambodia;
 * Green energy legislation to the United Arab Emirates;
 * Horse-related legislation to Mongolia;
 * Small and medium-sized enterprise promotional policies and laws to Brunai;
 * Mandatory electronic anklet enforcement ruls to Peru;
 * Government procurement regulations as well as the on-line e-Procurement system to Viet Nam, Costa Rica, Mongolia, etc.

Key words
legal systems, rule of law, legal technical assistance program, doing business overseas

History
Governace is effectuated by law. The Romans were good at implementing this principle. In the Roman Empire, the Roman rulers were eager to convey the Roman culture including the Roman characters and legal systems to their new territories. In the Age of Exploration, the colonialists adopted their laws and governance systems to their colonies. So the English law has been a governing law at all members of the Commonwealth.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese leaders were enthusiastic to import the German and French laws to accelerate the modernization of Japan. Although some Enlightenment thinkers and Western advisers tried to adopt Western laws to Korea, their efforts were short-lived and frustrated by the Japanese rulers during the Japanese occupation during the period 1910-1945.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese law and jurisprudence had an considerable influence over the Korean legal systems until the early 1960s, when the military junta headed by General Park Chung Hee decided to abolish the Japanese legal vestige. At that time, hundreds of new acts including the Commercial Act were legislated.

Legal Technical Assistance Program
Since 2000, the Korean government has provided legal technical assistance to help developing countries in Asia and Africa to modernize their legal systems with the fiscal and technical support of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA, 한국국제협력단/韓國國際協力團). It is estimated that Korea has made a greater contribution than other countries, having input more human and financial resources over the years.

But the success of the past Korean efforts has been discretely limited by institutions or agencies. In other words, the Ministry of Justice, Supreme Court, Constitutional Court, Korea Legal Research Institute, etc. separately invited foreign lawyers to attend education or training programs and provided sporadic opportunities for mutual visits only.

Therefore, these legal technical aid programs by institution need be consolidated into an integrated portal site so that legal training and education courses may be shared among the relevant agencies or institutions.

Perspectives
In the course of transition to the market economy, Poland was in need of a new law on secured transactions. At that time, Polish professors drafted the "Registered Pledge Act of 1996" in their own style, commingling civil law values and the core principles of UCC Article 9 (Secured Transactions). As a result, the U.S.-type computer hardware and software systems were necessary to implement the new secured transactions law, and a number of operators and lawyers to help and educate Polish specialists to apply the new systems. Likewise, the Korean government, in particular, Division of Legal Exchange and Cooperation of the Ministry of Government Legislation, is planning to make a custom-made legal technical assistance program to meet the detailed need of developing countries in need of Korea's legal aid. It has been proved that a kind of invisible social overhead capital (SOC) like legal systms is more effective than tangible goods to strenghthen economic exchange and cooperation with the third world countries.

Out of question, doing business in the countries which have adopted Korean legal systems would be much easier, and any dispute arising out of those countries could be properly settled. That's why major countries are eager to export or share their own legal systems with their trading partners.