국제사법상 어음․수표 관련 규정에 관한 소고

With advance of the rapid development of electronic payment methods in Korea, international payment methods have also improved thanks to advances in the IT technology, making it possible to cross-border fund transfer between countries faster and cheaper than ever before. Therefore, unlike in the past, the use of bills of exchange, which were used as a payment method for international trades, has largely disappeared. It is also true that checks, with the exception of traveler's checks, are usually used for domestic purposes, and the reasons for using checks internationally have considerably diminished. However, there are still examples of international use of bills of exchange, and traveler's checks are still used, so that it is necessary to properly understand the private international law aspects of bills of exchange, promissory notes and checks.
However, there are only few domestic studies on bills and checks under the Private International Law Act of Korea. This is true not only for substantive law textbooks covering the law of bills and checks, but also for textbooks on private international law. It is also difficult to find relevant legal articles. The bills and check provisions of Korean PIL Act are based on the Geneva Bills and Promissory Note Convention and the Geneva Check Convention, but, unfortunately, there are no domestic research papers on these conventions and only few international papers. The conflict of laws are intended to pursue the international justice of uniformity of judgment, and in this respect, there is no problem in incorporating international Conventions into the Korean PIL Act. However, how to interpret them is ultimately the task of academics and courts. Since there have not been many international cases involving bills and checks, there has not been much need for research, and I believe that the lack of researchers in this field is also a reason for the lack of due research. Nevertheless, there is still a need to study the precise understanding of the provisions related to bills and checks in the Korean PIL Act and the logic on which they are based.
Therefore, this article first briefly introduces the history of the Geneva Conventions; then, it examines Articles 79 through 88 of the Korean PIL Act which provides for the connecting factors of bills and checks in order to offer due understanding of the relevant provisions and to provide clues for further research; finally, concluding remarks are drawn.