공무원연금법상 유족보상금의 성격

Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the legal character of the Bereaved Familys

Compensation (the BFC) in the Public Officials Pension Act (the POPA) in

Korea through scrutinizing the relevant statutory amendments and the change of

judicial precedents in aiming toward ensuring the right to social security benefits

of the bereaved family from the social security legal structural perspective.

The significance of clarifying the legal character of the BFC in the POPA in

Korea is mainly due to the question on the possible conflict between the right

of claim for damages under the State Compensation Act and the right of claim

for compensations under the POPA of the bereaved family in the case of tort

that a public officials death is caused by organs of the nation or private

individuals. In this respect, the POPA takes the policy of adjusting the benefits

under other Acts in deducting the same kind of benefits, cf. Article 33 (1) in

the POPA. Hence, if the legal character of the BFC would be considered as the

right to social security benefit which is different from the right to claim for

damages, the total amount of the bereaved familys benefit would be maximized

without deduction. However, in 1998, the Supreme Court overruled its previous

decision in this regard in 1970 which had held that the legal character of the

BFC had been a right to social security benefit and thus had not been able to

be deducted from the amount of State compensation, by clearly concluding that

the legal character of the BFC was the right to claim for damages, not the right

to social security benefit, hence it had to be deducted from the amount of the...