가상자산 거래의 물권법적 측면에 관한 연구 - UNIDROIT의 디지털자산 프로젝트 논의를 중심으로 -

In recent years, Discussions and legislative activities in each country regarding the regulatory area of virtual assets have been quite active. However, the discussion on the civil law aspects, among others proprietary law aspects of virtual assets is relatively insufficient. Recently, there has been some progress in the related discussion in Korea; however comprehensive review or discussion is still lacking. On the other hand, in foreign countries, the Digital Assets and Private Law Project of UNIDROIT (hereinafter, the “UNIDROIT Project”) has been carried out since 2020, in order to provide a unified Principles with regard to the proprietary law aspects of virtual assets transactions. Currently, the degree of the discussion has considerably progressed, and the final draft Principles are expected to be adopted in May 2023 after the last working group meeting in May of this year.
This Article elaborates on the draft Principles contemplated by the UNIDROIT Project on the definition and categories of virtual assets, the concept of control, acquisition and disposition of virtual assets, custody of virtual assets, security interests in virtual assets and conflict of laws, together with the introduction of the preliminary translation of the draft Principles and their key contents. The UNIDROIT Project is expected to have significant implications on legislative actions in the near future, given that the current situation that the civil law aspects of virtual assets are in legal vacuum in most countries.
In fact, since Korea has been neglecting the discussion of virtual assets itself, neither civil law nor regulatory legal aspects of virtual assets have been actively discussed. Of course, since more than 12 legislative bills on virtual asset markets regulation have been submitted to the 21st National Assembly, it is expected that the related regulatory law will be enacted within this year. However, compared to the regulatory law on the virtual asset markets, it is difficult to find discussions on the civil law aspects, and there is no legislative activity thereon. This situation is largely attributed to the negative view of the Korean government on virtual assets. Accordingly, I think that Korea could not participate in any of the UNIDROIT Project meetings at all, nor did the UNIDROIT Project attract the attention of Korean scholars. In the future, with reference to the UNIDROIT Project, I hope that discussions and research of civil law aspects of virtual assets will be actively conducted in academia, the government and the National Assembly in the same way as the regulatory law aspects.