After years of serious debate and discussion over the best way to regulate the so-called Collective Investment Scheme of Union Type (or "Union Type Funds"), both the investment community and lawmakers of Japan seem to agree that the upcoming enactment of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (or the "New Law") must take into account the reality that Union Type Funds are "atypical" in nature, meaning that they are much different in their investment format from so-called standardized funds. It is true that among the legal and conceptual details of the legislation that they seem to be deciding on can be found similarities with some of the investment laws of Korea such as the Indirect Investment Asset Management Business Act, which has already gone into effect, and the so-called Capital Market Integration Law, which is currently in preparation for enactment. With respect to the legal and regulatory approaches taken by the two countries for the abovedescribed laws, however, a number of differences can also be identified. Distinctive features of the approaches taken by the investment community and lawmakers, especially in the New Law can be summarized as follows: 1. The New Law by definition does not put "partnership companies under commercial law" into the category of Union Type Funds. 2. In defining Union Type Funds, the New Law seeks "conflict-free consistency" with other related laws by way of eliminating and/or preventing the possibility of causing unwanted conflicts (of interest) among different laws and regulations. To do that, lawmakers in Japan have even considered repealing the Corporation Law, if deemed necessary. 3. With respect to the issue of regulating the establishment of funds, including Union Type Funds, the New Law is more likely to adopt a registration system-base approach rather than a reporting system. 4. To avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible and define the responsibilities or areas of responsibility of the fund trustees as clearly as possible, the basic and categorical duties for those trustees are to be specified in the New Law; however, the New Law will leave room for specific details of those duties to be able dealt with through the applicable clause or clauses of individual contracts. 5. The New Law limits the qualifications for fund managers to only a corporate person, which means that any natural person is not to be allowed legally to manage a certain Union Type Fund. 6. Under the New Law an expanded and thus more comprehensive concept of marketing and/or solicitation will be applied to such activities committed by fund managers. 7. There is a possibility that the New Law, unlike the Securities Transaction Law currently in effect, may exclude the so-called "public notice (or public notification) clause" since both market participants and lawmakers agree that Union Type Funds can be regulated effectively without it. At this point in time when market participants and lawmakers in Korea are eager to establish successfully the so-called Capital Market Integration Law (or the Law over Finance and Investment Service Industries and Capital Markets as it is tentatively called), examining and taking into full consideration the differences and distinctive features of the approaches taken by Japan may provide useful guidance, especially in terms of minimizing potential issues and/or problems that may occur after its legislation.