The consumer policies for the electronic transaction

선진국의 전자거래 소비자정책

This paper surveys consumer policies for the internet transaction in the developed countries. Recently the internet transaction has been witnessing a remarkable change represented by the rapid spread of "revolution of distribution". It cannot be, however, stated that internet transaction will dominates all the market places without enhancing consumer's reliability in the internet transaction. Many countries made an efforts to the consumer protection in order to develop infra-structure of information industry. We will soon discover a new paradigm that consumer protection is not a tool for development of cyber market but the goal itself. We survey the process of consumer policies discussed in the developed countries and study the point of prevailing arguments of the consumer protection in the internet transaction. The arguments discussed in OECD meetings are debatable, especially, to the degree of government intervention in the field of consumer protection between EU and US. In contrast of US insisted on the minimum intervention of the government, EU suggest the opinion of more aggressive role of government in consumer policy in the cyber market. This paper attempts to provide several guide lines of Korean consumer policy in the cyber market.