Problem Findings Regarding the Legal Liability of Soil Contaminated Sites in Korea, and it's Policy Suggestion from a Comparison Study to U. S., U K., Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark's Policies

토양오염지역의 책임에 관한 우리 나라, 미국, 영국, 독일, 네덜란드, 덴마크 법과 제도의 비교 분석 및 우리 나라 정책개선방향

Attempts were made to compare and analyze the policies of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark concerning Korea's major problems associated with legal liability of the contaminated sites. These countries were chosen from a feasible preliminary analysis of 18 countries of the EU and the U. S. The major problems were revealed based on the analysis of Korean legacy and legislation, which are summarized as follows i) lack of clear detailed technical and legal guidance to determine the responsible party or parties of contaminated sites, ii) no distinction between the strict and non strict legal liability of innocent land owners, iii) no clearly set limit on retroactive legal liability. Comparison of the policies of countries chosen suggested improvements regarding these major problems as follows: i) activating national and international research on soil contamination prevention policy, ii) arranging distinct legal regulation between strict and non strict liability criteria, iii) establishing the limits on innocent and non strict liability, iv) establishing methodology and process of legal liability distribution and compensation, and v) establishing a legal process to redeem any benefit derived from remediation of contaminated sites with the public budget. Our policy suggestions above are not yet conclusive due to a lack of policy implementation simulation. Additional research is needed on aspects of social, economic and long term effects of the proposed policy directions. Nevertheless, application of the policy suggestions of this research would increase the efficacy of Korean policy regarding the survey and remediation of the potentially contaminated sites.