The article 449 (2) of Korean Civil Act provides that a claim can be made non-assignable by parties. That agreement for non-assignability is usually named as an "anti-assignment clause" on a claim. As an interpretation of this provision the so-called ...
The article 449 (2) of Korean Civil Act provides that a claim can be made non-assignable by parties. That agreement for non-assignability is usually named as an "anti-assignment clause" on a claim. As an interpretation of this provision the so-called "theory of legal effect in rem" prevails, which says that the claim including anti-assignment clause is non-assignable against everyone. Of course this article also provides some security for the third party in good faith, but the Korean Supreme Court restricts this security only on such cases where the third party is not only in good faith but also not of gross negligence.
This anti-assignment clause of such strong effect gives some issues from several perspectives. Firstly, our provision of anti-assignment clause is not universal from legal comparative points. Japanese and German civil codes also provide legal basis for anti-assignment clause similar to ours, but they have raised a lot of controversies and criticism on a basis of legal theory and socio-economic analysis. As a result Japan is putting forward a new scheme limiting the current anti-assignment clause, while Germany already introduced a special provision allowing commercial effective assignment regardless of anti-assignment clause. This international comparative trends are also observed in USA's Uniform Commercial Code, UN Convention of the Assignment of Receivables in International Trade, Draft Common Frame Reference(DCFR) as model rules of European private law and UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts(PICC).
Secondly, in terms of transaction cost analysis the current provision of anti-assignment clause seems somewhat unrealistic. The regime in force assumes that creditor and debtor could negotiate efficiently and the assignee of the claim also could be protected by the information disclosure system provided by the standing regulation. This result in over-protection of debtor's interests, while hampering creditor's title on the claim, the expectation of the assignee and allowing the opportunistic behavior of the other third parties. Lastly, such an anti-assignment clause erga omnes could be regarded as a sore point in legal theory, not only in that it forms a idiosyncratic exception for the modern principle of free disposition of property rights, but also in that it reveals logical inconsistency in explaining some issues, for example, debtor's acceptance of transfer attempted in violation of anti-assignment clause.
Therefore this thesis suggests some proposals for improving the current regime in terms of legal construction and legislation. Firstly, as a new constructive attempt of the current provision, the court shall not require the assignee to be not of gross-negligence for the purpose of a claim's negotiability and transferee's justifiable expectation. And this thesis also provides the theory of "limiting disposition authority" as an alternative of theory of effect in rem, which is supposed to coincide with the existing rules of property transfer.
Furthermore, the legislators need to amend the article 449 (2) of the current Civil Act, so that the assignment in violation of anti-assignment clause shall be effective against everyone except for the debtor. This so-called relative voidness of the assignment protects not only the transactional security and interests of the assignee, but also the debtor's interests secured by anti-assignment clause. Moreover, in a certain cases regulated by special legislation like「Act on the Security Right on Movables, Receivables and others」, the absolute effect of assignment shall be secured, for the negotiability of such a claim as a property right prevails over other legal interests.