Investigation of critical factors affecting successful mediation: Korean mediation users perspectives

Mediation has been the most favourable tool amongst Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods resulting in high effectiveness of time and cost for the procedure of dispute resolution, together with maintenance of the relationship amongst parties. However, in spite of the advantages, mediation in South Korea has still been shown to be in the early stage of its development. To identify the fundamental problems of the models in Korea, this study analyses the parties' perspectives toward the current mediation models through evaluation methods of their satisfaction degree. As a result, this research reveals three main problems in the current models; long procedure, involuntary nature and non-facilitative processes.