The need to reestablish electronic documents and evidence investigation regulations

As the use of electronic documents expanded into the public service sector due to the widespread use of the Internet and the development of information and communication technology, electronic litigation procedures were introduced to allow the use of electronic documents in judicial procedures. The legal basis for this was the Act on the Use of Electronic Documents in Civil Litigation, etc. (Act No. 10183 dated March 24, 2010) (hereinafter referred to as the “Civil Electronic Documents Act”), which was enacted as a special law for the use of electronic litigation procedures and has been enforced without any special revisions to date. Although electronic documents are currently widely used socially and economically and have long been of evidence value in civil litigation, the provisions regarding electronic evidence in the Civil Procedure Act are still inadequate and differ from the provisions of the Civil Electronic Documents Act and its rules, which causes confusion. Therefore, it is believed that improvements are needed from now on in a direction that conforms to the trends of IT development and judicial informatization. First, it is necessary to maintain the Electronic Civil Documents Act and its rules as the basis for the procedural law for electronic litigation, but to clarify the ambiguity of the current law regarding the term “electronic document,” define “electronic document” as a litigation document that must be submitted to proceed with electronic litigation procedures, and define “electronic evidence” as an electronic form submitted as evidence, thereby redefining the concept by distinguishing between electronic documents and electronic evidence. In addition, the evidence examination provisions in the Civil Electronic Documents Act and its rules should be incorporated into the Civil Procedure Act, which is a basic law, not a special law, so that the law can be applied as a unified regulation in any situation, whether it is an electronic lawsuit or a general civil lawsuit, when electronic evidence is submitted during the lawsuit procedure, and the consistency of the civil procedure system should be maintained. I hope that the small suggestions in this paper will make a small contribution to the revision of the Civil Procedure Act.