1. Article 11(1) of the former Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act (amended by Act No. 9916, Jan. 1, 2010; hereinafter “Inheritance Tax Act”) provides that “In cases where inheritance commences due to death resulting from war or other similar injury or disease that occurred in the course of performing official duties, such as war or other equivalent performance of official duties, inheritance tax shall not be levied.”

In light of the language, purport, etc. of the above provision, in order to be exempted from inheritance tax pursuant to the above provision, there should be “a causal relationship between the performance of war or other equivalent official duties (hereinafter “Korean War, etc.”) and the injury or disease.” Such causal relationship should be proved to the extent that there is a proximate causal relationship between the performance of war, etc. and the injury or disease when considering all the circumstances, even if it is not clearly proven in medical and natural science.

2. citing the reasoning of the first instance judgment, the lower court: ① registered as a patient suffering from defoliants pursuant to Articles 4 and 5(1) of the former Act on Support, etc. for Patients from defoliant (amended by Act No. 7875, Mar. 3, 2006; hereinafter “the former Act”) by the head of the Suwon War Veterans Office around June 24, 2003; ② designated and registered as a person of distinguished service to the State (Grade 3); ② according to the results of various epidemiological investigations, such as the report of the U.S. National Institute of Medical Research, etc., it was announced that there was an epidemiological causal relationship between the exposure of hazardous substances contained in defoliants and the Daese tree species, etc.; ③ There was no person who suffers from Daese trees from among lineal relatives of D, and there was no person who died from defoliant.