- KCA held a joint international seminar with Daejeon Metropolitan City -

 

The Korea Consumer Agency (President: Young-seen Kim, www.kca.go.kr) co-hosted an international seminar on strategies for financial consumer protection in Daejeon, Korea with Daejeon Metropolitan City (Mayor: Hong-cheol Yeom, www.daejeon.go.kr) and the Council of Consumer Organizations in Daejeon(President : Oh-seop Yoon) on Oct. 19^th, 2011.

During the seminar, Dr. Jin-ja Hwang from Consumer Policy Research Office at the KCA made a presentation financial consumer issues targeting citizens in local areas and a countermeasure focusing on consumer damage cases involving aging population. From Japan, Mr. Kazuhiro Yoshioka, former chair of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations talked about consumer issues involving senior citizens and relevant law and system through his presentation.

Amid deregulation and globalization of the financial industry, consumers are faced with difficulties of selection among diversified and complex financial products. In particular, it is even more difficult for senior citizens to select an appropriate financial product for them. As of 2010, Korea entered the Aging Society with those over age 65 taking up 11% among total population, while Japan had already become a Super-Aged Society with that population taking up over 20%.

According to the KCA, number of consumer redress cases related to finance and insurance is on the rise to 2,292 cases in 2010 from 1,556 in 2009. Among these, damage to consumers over age 60 is gradually increasing to 341 cases in 2010 from 266 cases in 2009.

Senior citizens can suffer heavily from financial consumer damage as they have quite poor understanding about financial products as well as they are excluded from relevant information.

Throughout the seminar, various topics were covered including overall financial consumer issues in Japan and Korea and consumer damage cases targeting senior citizens in the aged society. Also, a variety of panelists took part in the seminar from the KCA, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Daejeon Metropolitan City, consumer groups based in Daejeon City, the Press, and the Academia.