S. Korea ranked 26th in dispute resolution — Justice Ministry moves to overhaul system

South Korea's poor showing in the dispute resolution category of the World Bank Group's new business climate assessment, B-Ready (the Business Ready), has prompted the Ministry of Justice to begin work on regulatory reform, including drafting legislative amendments for domestic law.

The ministry published a bid notice Wednesday for a project titled "Research on Regulatory Reform and Legislation to Improve the B-Ready Dispute Resolution Sector."

In its request for proposals, the ministry said the study aims "to analyze the international legal standards used as evaluation criteria and the assessment benchmarks set by the World Bank, in order to respond to the World Bank Group's evaluation of the business environment's dispute resolution component."

According to the ministry, South Korea ranked first overall in the 2025 B-Ready report but placed 26th in the dispute resolution category. Through this research, the ministry plans to analyze reform cases from other countries, identify measures compatible with Korea's legal framework, and develop improvement proposals. It also intends to conduct comparative legal research on dispute resolution systems and practices in South Korea, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and to produce draft legislative amendments aimed at promoting alternative dispute resolution between private parties and public institutions.

The World Bank discontinued its previous Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index in September 2021 and replaced it with B-Ready, which it publishes annually with country rankings. B-Ready provides a comprehensive assessment of the private sector covering the regulatory regime, public services and operational efficiency, and is regarded as taking into account not only the impact on individual companies but also the broader effect on society.

B-Ready includes a dispute resolution component that evaluates the efficiency and quality of resolving commercial disputes between businesses. The component covers the adequacy of laws governing court procedures and alternative dispute resolution, services related to alternative dispute resolution, and the reliability, time and cost of dispute resolution — including the time and cost of recognizing and enforcing rulings.

The ministry said the primary focus of the research is analyzing the mediation and arbitration elements within the B-Ready dispute resolution framework. The work includes reviewing World Bank Group feedback on South Korea's dispute resolution performance in the EoDB reports from 2017 to 2020 and in the 2025 B-Ready report.

The research will also examine the current state of mediation and arbitration at home and abroad, identify relevant laws, systems and specialized institutions, and conduct comparative legal research drawing on international best practices. The study's scope also includes analyzing arbitration cases involving domestic public institutions, identifying the reasons arbitration among public institutions remains underused, and developing legislative proposals or regulatory reform measures to promote greater use of arbitration by public institutions.