The trends and evaluations for Governmental system of redressing consumers' losses in Japan: comparison to Korea

일본의 소비자피해구제 행정체제 현황 및 평가: 한국과의 비교를 중심으로

This study examined in detail the Japanese system of redressing consumers' losses and the overall consumer administrative system and compared them with the Korean counterpart to seek for a direction of reforming the systems. Several policy suggestions could be made as follows to activate the systems and improve the performances of the consumer administration in both Japan and Korea. First, in Japan, consumer center must be efficiently operated while private consumer groups, firms, consumer agencies and other organizations must actively join to actively redress consumers' losses and implement other consumer policies. Second, in Korea, regional consumer policies are weak so that they must learn Japanese well-developed regional consumer administration system by examining their current development, strengths, and weaknesses. Third, working conditions must be urgently improved, increasing the number of consumer counselors who are involved in consumer policies as well as to guarantee minimum level of their payment. On the other hand, the trend of hiring married and old employees being responsible for implementing consumer policies in Japan must be improved. Fourth, divisions of works in consumer policies among consumer groups as well as their specialization in Korea are necessary. Finally, as counseling of consumers through internet were not available in Japan, that type of counseling must introduce and become more popular in the future.