SUMMARY: ADVOCATE FOR THE PROGRESS AND PROCEDURE OF ORAL PROCEEDINGS

1. Operation of Concentrated Proceedings and a New Model in Civil Procedure

In 1989, an effort to improve the case management system in civil cases was started by establishing an exemplary bench in the Seoul Central District Court.

The underlying principle and representative motto of the �New model’ is �the enhancement of public faith in the judiciary through the substantive court proceedings’. In other words, the purpose of the �New model’ is to increase the likelihood that parties will accept courts’ decisions, as a result of satisfaction in the court proceedings. The proceedings under the �New model’ are as follows. In order to avoid the previously sporadic and dispersed court proceed­ings, parties’ exchanges and rebuttals via written-documents (�pleading’) is required to take place before such proceedings. Then, all the points at issue and the demonstrations of proof should be prepared before the first scheduled court date when concentrated examination of evidence is completed. All these proceedings are newly developed to transform the previous traditional court proceedings (which requires lots of scheduled court dates and had almost no substantive oral argument) into a new system (which requires the parties to exchange pre-trial documents for an open confrontation through actual oral arguments).

2. Operation Plan for Oral Proceedings

Although there has been noticeable achievement in pre-trial confrontation through the well-prepared written argument, oral argument proceedings have not been effectuated successfully. Therefore, in 2006, every court in our coun­try simultaneously executed the �operation plan for oral proceedings’ stressing pro se parties’ active participation in proceedings and communications among all the people involved in the case.

On 2 December 2005, the National Chief Judges Conference identified the need to make efforts to change court proceedings toward reinforcement of oral proceedings. Accordingly, courts around the country began to drive forward ways to strengthen oral proceedings. In 2006, the following official confer­ences were sponsored by the judiciary: the national conference of vice chief judges;^[45] the national conference of civil presiding judges;^[46] an informal gath­ering for discussion between the Supreme Court and the Korean Bar Association;^[47] an informal gathering for discussion in courts around the coun­try held by the Court Administration;^[48] nationwide court workshops for oral proceedings;^[49] and a seminar for reforming civil court proceedings in the Judicial Research and Training Institute.^[50] All these conferences and gather­ings were integrated into the bench book �Manual of the oral proceeding’ published at the end of 2006. This book presents a standardized model for oral court proceedings. Workshops and seminars have been held throughout 2007 by courts around the country.

Many papers,^[51] articles^[52] and columns^[53] discussing oral court proceedings have been published through newspaper and other publications. Workshop materials and trial audience reports have also been published.^[54]

IV.