The necessity of transition to no fault divorce and legal reform measures: Based on a comparative legal review
Authors:   The Korean Society Of Family Law, Hong Seung-Hee 
Published: December 2023

In Korea, the Japanese Civil Code was used during the Japanese colonial period, and the Civil Code, a translation of the Japanese Civil Code, was applied until the Korean Civil Code enacted in 1958 was enforced in 1960. The Korean Civil Code is very similar to the Japanese civil law, and the number of articles is significantly smaller and lacks specificity compared to the civil laws of many Western countries. In the case of the divorce law, the deficiencies of such legislation are being supplemented by the interpretation of the courts. Divorce laws in the West, such as Germany, England, France, and the United States, have been revised in the direction of protecting the rights and interests of the parties through numerous historical changes and discussions since the 19th century. Based on the history of changes in various Western countries, Korea will also need to revise the civil law in the direction of fulfilling the state's constitutional duty to protect marriage and family life.
Through counseling before marriage and divorce, the marriage and family system should be strengthened, and counseling and other educational programs should be activated so that a recoverable family can be saved. In order to minimize conflicts in a marriage relationship that has already been irretrievably broken and exists only legally, no fault divorce based on separation for a certain period of time should be introduced. And in order to protect innocent spouses and children who do not want to divorce, marriage should be terminated only if protective measures or agreements for innocent spouses and children are included in the divorce ruling, and divorce should not be allowed if the divorce threatens to cause economic, social and psychological difficulties for them.
In addition, if legal separation system where the obligation to cohabit is exempted and a marriage is deemed to have broken down after a certain period of separation is established, I think it can serve as a buffer zone to encourage reunion after separation and also as a gateway from marriage to divorce. The legal separation system can alleviate the impact of divorce, and has an economic effect almost similar to divorce, except that the marriage relationship is legally maintained, so the parties can attempt reconciliation while stably separating for a certain period of time.
I think it is desirable to unify the divorce procedure by incorporating the divorce by agreement system into the judicial divorce procedure to ensure that the rights and interests of the divorced parties are fully protected. As with the divorce laws of many countries that adopt no fault divorce, even if there is mutual consent to divorce, divorce must be conducted through a trial and should be granted only after court approval of an agreement regarding children and the financial effects of the divorce. Additionally, if a couple with minor children wants to divorce by agreement, counseling should be mandatory.
In addition, according to the Supreme Court precedent, Korea's property division system has the main purpose of distributing the actual common property acquired during marriage, and the supportive nature such as consideration for the other person's livelihood security is added. Since the current support system is insufficient to protect spouses with poor economic status in that the system is not provided by law, a separate support system after divorce should be prepared like in many Western countries.
As pointed out by the Supreme Court's ruling in 2015, the fact that the spouse responsible for breakdown of marriage is not allowed to file for divorce is also intended to prevent the other spouse from being expelled by the spouse in the bigamous relationship.