[Ministry of Justice Report] Protection for Small Business Owners and Tenants... Promotion of Additional Legislative Measures

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] The Ministry of Justice will take additional legislative measures to reduce the economic burden on small business owners. In addition to stabilizing the rent increase/decrease claim system introduced under the amendment of the 'Commercial Building Lease Protection Act' due to reasons such as infectious diseases, it will also discuss extending the special provisions on overdue rent.

On the 8th, the Ministry of Justice disclosed the '2021 Major Work Plan of the Ministry of Justice,' which includes these contents to provide 'legal administration that supports people's livelihoods.'

First, it will promote the amendment of the Commercial Building Lease Protection Act in the first half of this year to protect tenants. This is a measure to explicitly clarify the exercise effect of tenants' rights to terminate contracts and the current rent increase/decrease claim rights in unavoidable circumstances such as business closure or sharp income decline due to COVID-19.

In particular, the amendment of the 'Commercial Building Lease Protection Act' to provide tenant relief such as compensation for eviction and priority occupancy rights when the landlord refuses to renew the lease contract due to demolition or reconstruction will also be promoted within the first half of the year.

It will also work on the prompt recovery of damages for victims of mass fraud among the common people. A representative measure is the full-scale implementation of the criminal damage property restitution system, which allows victims of organized fraud crimes such as voice phishing and multi-level marketing to receive damage recovery simply. Along with this, it plans to establish a criminal damage property restitution system and provide education for dedicated staff to early block property concealment and escape.

The criminal public defender system will also be introduced. This is to prevent human rights violations of suspects under investigation and ensure compliance with due process, expanding the public defender system to suspects under investigation. This measure addresses the criticism that suspects can only receive public defenders at the court review stage due to the current public defender system focusing on defendants.

In addition, it will promote the amendment of the 'Attorney Act' to block undue influence by former government attorneys at all stages from case acceptance and defense to post-monitoring and disciplinary actions. The main points include restrictions on case acceptance periods for retired public officials who become attorneys and extensions of the submission period for case materials. It will also strengthen penalties for secret defense aimed at tax evasion and legal restriction avoidance and include fines for simple secret defense.

A Ministry of Justice official stated, "We will promote legislative policies that align with implementing a fair social order that considers the vulnerable and pursues equal opportunities, supporting people's livelihoods."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.