Legal Adult Age Reduced By One Year To 19

On June 2, the Ministry of Justice clarified that it will give advance notice of the revised bill on the civil law that lowers the legal adult age from 20 to 19 sometime in June, and submit the bill to the National Assembly in August.

On this afternoon, the Ministry of Justice held a final conference of a special subcommittee meeting on the issue of revising civil law at the Seoul High Court of Justice in Seocho-dong, Seoul and confirmed the aforementioned content of the revised bill on civil law.

Controversy is expected, as the law that gives voting rights to those over 20 will have to be revised to those over 19 if the legal adult age is lowered. In addition, there is possibility of revising various license-related laws that stipulate 20 years of age as the minimum age of acquisition.

Once the revised bill is carried out, those over 19 will be able to exercise juristic acts including applying for a credit card alone and conclude sales, as well as getting married without parental consent.

The guarantee policy was largely revised so that “blanket guarantees,” which provided life-long guarantees without set terms for current or future debts, were prohibited and that the guarantee terms were limited to three years.

The revised bill stipulated that the creditor should announce the situation of breaching financial debt to the guarantor in cases where the main debtor (the one who actually borrowed money) failed to pay back the debt for over three months. In case of no announcements, the bill stipulated that the guarantor be relieved of responsibility for interest rates after that period.

In addition, on occasions of a “serious defect” in completed buildings, the existing civil law only allows claims for compensation; however, the revised bill allows requests for the removal of the building.

In terms of civil law, this revised bill amends about 130 principle provisions directly related to public welfare from the section of property excluding the section on family, and is the first full-scale revision since the enactment of the civil law.

Jin-Young Hwang buddy@donga.com