Medical treatment is based on a contract between the doctor and the patient, and the doctor must obtain the patient's consent to the medical treatment. This is to protect the patient's right to self-determination, and as a prerequisite for consent, the doctor is obligated to explain the medical treatment. However, there is no explicit regulation and no case law has directly addressed the duty of explanation for minor patients, but the recent Target Judgment has for the first time suggested that doctors have a direct duty to explain to minor patients and the requirements for determining that the duty of explanation has been violated. As a prerequisite to discussing the validity of the target judgment, we examined the general theory of a physician's duty of explanation, the legal basis for a minor patient's capacity to consent, and the difference between a minor patient's capacity to consent to medical treatment and civil law capacity. We also confirmed that the term decision-making capacity, as used in the target judgment and the statute, has virtually the same meaning as consent. After concluding that the duty of explanation to a minor patient is generally fulfilled by indirect explanation, but only by direct explanation, the case law sets out two requirements for recognizing a breach of a doctor's duty of explanation to a minor patient. There are several problems with the logic of the target judgment, first of all, considering that the other party to the duty of explanation, the minor patient, has decision-making capacity, adopting the direct explanation method is consistent with the protection and welfare of the minor patient's right to self-determination; secondly, even according to the logic of the target judgment, the criteria for determining decision-making capacity is still ambiguous; and thirdly, the indirect explanation method may be preferable in some cases, such as when a minor patient refuses medical treatment, which is an example of a situation where the target judgment requires the direct explanation method. Considering the problems with the subject judgment, it is recommended that the direct explanation method, in which the physician directly explains the medical procedure to the minor patient, should be the principle for the physician's duty to explain the medical procedure to the minor patient, and that specific practice guidelines should be developed to allow indirect explanations to minimize the confusion that may arise in the medical field.