The National Assembly has been hastily revising many important laws. Representative examples include the Commercial Act, which stipulates "directors' fiduciary duty to shareholders," and the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act (Yellow Envelope Act). Such poorly crafted laws have triggered conflicts among community members and entrenched an inefficient, high-cost dispute resolution structure. The confusion currently unfolding in society stems from these flawed laws. Now the National Assembly is seeking to enact a Class Action Law. An examination of the 14 bills reveals a considerable number of toxic provisions.
Class actions have no limits on their subject matter. They can be applied to all types of damage claims, including consumer lawsuits, large-scale environmental damage, breaches of directors' fiduciary duty, and labor union damage claims against companies or business owners. If the government and local authorities are found to have prevention and supervisory responsibilities for the COVID-19 medical response, the Itaewon tragedy, and the Muan Airport disaster, there is a risk that lawsuits against the state, local governments, and public enterprises could be filed all at once. Combined with politicians' populism, this could lead to massive waste of the national treasury. Some bills stipulate that "this law shall also apply to damage claims arising from causes that occurred before the enforcement of this law," directly challenging the "principle of non-retroactive legislation" under the Constitution, which is the core of the rule of law. The Class Action Law is not a simple procedural law. Creating and applying a new law to events that occurred when no such law existed undermines the rule of law.
Most of the proposed bills adopt the "opt-out" method. This means that if victims remain passive out of inconvenience, they automatically become plaintiffs. This infringes upon individuals' right to self-determination and the right to trial. Europe generally adopts the "opt-in" method. In the Coupang personal information breach case, 33.7 million people could become plaintiffs. It is questionable whether the courts can handle such large-scale litigation, and even calculating compensation at 100,000 won per person, the total damages would reach 3.37 trillion won ($2.4 billion). In the event of a loss, even large corporations could fall into deficit for years due to sudden massive financial outlays, and mid-sized and small companies would face concerns about their very survival.
The requirements for screening lawsuit certification must also be set precisely. The bills require screening for numerosity, efficiency, and commonality. Such lax provisions alone could lead to an abuse of litigation. The U.S. Class Action Law adds requirements such as predominance, superiority, and manageability, yet more than 13,000 class action lawsuits were filed in U.S. federal courts in 2025, and the number continues to rise each year. The provision stating that "even if the defendant files an immediate appeal against the court's decision to certify the lawsuit, it shall have no effect of staying execution" unnecessarily restricts the defendant's right to defense.
The provision on "court's ex officio examination of evidence" breaks the "adversarial principle," a cardinal rule of civil litigation, and strengthens the court's ex officio intervention, creating the risk of leaking a company's core trade secrets or internal strategy documents during the litigation process. While this appears to partially adopt the U.S.-style discovery system, in the United States, plaintiffs and defendants request necessary materials from each other, and the court supervises whether the scope is appropriate. Even if a company wishes to reach an early settlement with the plaintiffs to resolve the matter, it becomes impossible without the court's approval. This restricts "party autonomy" and deprives companies of the opportunity to end disputes with strategic flexibility. We must recognize that such imprecise laws, far from protecting citizens' rights and interests, only fuel conflict and confusion.
