Class actions, originally developed in the United States, have recently spread internationally. Not every country that has emulated the US’s style of class actions has seen the class action tool being frequently used. Korea, one of the civil law countries that adopted a US-style class action in securities law more than 10 years ago, has a securities class action that serves as an excellent example of a legal transplant that is underutilized. Over the last 13 years since the Securities-Related Class Action Act (‘the SCAA’) was enacted in Korea in 2004, only 10 class action suits have been filed. Instead, securities damage suits in the form of non-class actions (‘securities damage suits’) are more frequently used in Korea. In this article, I aim to fill the gap in the literature by empirically researching why the securities-related class action is seldom used in Korea, focusing on the perspective of the plaintiffs’ lawyers and considering securities damage suits as a substitute. To accomplish this, the study relies on a mixed-methods research approach: (1) interviews with plaintiffs’ lawyers and plaintiffs themselves and (2) a content analysis of court decisions on securities class action suits and securities damage suits. This research finds that risk-averse plaintiffs’ lawyers, facing large costs in bringing securities class action suits, consider bringing securities class actions only for cases that have a higher possibility of winning and enforcement. This research provides insights into the conditions for successful legal transplants to other countries considering a US-style class action as an option.

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集体诉讼稀缺性：韩国证券集体诉讼的实证分析

最初在美国发展的集体诉讼，最近在国际上蔓延。并非每个效仿美国集体诉讼风格的国家都经常使用集体诉讼工具。韩国是10多年前在证券法中采用美国式集体诉讼的大陆法系国家之一，其证券集体诉讼是未充分利用的法律移植的一个很好的例子。自 2004 年韩国颁布《证券相关集体诉讼法》（“SCAA”）以来的过去 13 年中，仅提起了 10 起集体诉讼。相反，以非集体诉讼形式（“证券损害诉讼”）形式的证券损害诉讼在韩国更为常用。在本文中，我的目标是通过实证研究为什么在韩国很少使用与证券相关的集体诉讼来填补文献中的空白，重点关注原告律师的观点，并考虑以证券损害诉讼作为替代。为实现这一目标，该研究依赖于混合方法研究方法：(1) 与原告律师和原告本人的访谈；(2) 对法院关于证券集体诉讼和证券损害诉讼的判决的内容分析。本研究发现，规避风险的原告律师在提起证券集体诉讼时面临巨额费用，因此只考虑对胜诉和执行可能性较高的案件提起证券集体诉讼。