He Collected ₩700 Million in Insurance for Corn Removal — Then the Insurer Tried to Sue Again. The Supreme Court Said No.

By Juwon Kang, April 30, 2026

The Background

– A policyholder received cryotherapy for corn (티눈) removal thousands of times and successfully claimed approximately ₩700 million in surgical disease benefits under his insurance policy.
– The insurer argued the contracts had been taken out with fraudulent intent — specifically to extract insurance money — and sought to have them declared void.
– Both the first and second instance courts ruled against the insurer, finding the contracts valid. Those judgments became final and binding.

The Second Round of Litigation

– The policyholder continued to submit insurance claims after the litigation concluded, prompting the insurer to file a fresh lawsuit arguing it had no further obligation to pay — on the grounds that the contracts were either void or had since been terminated.
– The policyholder countersued, demanding payment of the outstanding unpaid claims.
– The appellate court sided with the insurer in this second round, finding that newly surfaced circumstances since the original judgment justified reconsidering whether the contracts were void.

The Supreme Court Decision

– The Supreme Court’s First Division reversed the appellate ruling and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court.
– The court reaffirmed the principle of res judicata — that once a legal relationship has been definitively settled by a final judgment, neither party may relitigate it.
– The court held that additional evidence supporting the same factual position, or a new legal theory applied to the same underlying facts, does not constitute a genuinely new basis sufficient to override a final judgment.
– Critically, the court emphasized that the validity of a contract must be assessed as of the time it was formed — subsequent conduct by the policyholder cannot retroactively render an already-validated contract void.
– The insurer’s so-called new circumstances were found to be nothing more than supplementary material supporting the same argument already rejected — not a new factual development that could justify a different outcome.

Why This Case Matters

– This ruling is a clean reaffirmation of res judicata in Korean civil procedure — one of the foundational principles preventing endless relitigation of settled disputes.
– For insurance practitioners, it draws a clear line: even where a policyholder’s subsequent conduct looks suspicious or abusive, an insurer that has already lost a contract validity case cannot revive that argument through a new suit dressed up with additional evidence.
– The decision also confirms that contract validity is frozen at the moment of formation — post-formation behavior is relevant to other claims, but not to reopening a final judgment on whether the contract was valid to begin with.
– More broadly, the ruling signals that Korean courts will apply res judicata strictly, and will not allow losing parties to circumvent finality simply by marshalling more evidence or reframing their legal theory.

Article: https://www.hankyung.com/article/202603254557i