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Korea clamps down on sexual violence
Growing outrage prompts stronger action against offenders
November 03,
2009
It has been a month since the Cho Du-sun case,
the brutal rape of an 8-year-old girl, rattled the nation. The case received
instant attention after it was featured on a current affairs show on KBS on
Sept. 22. One of the most untenable facts revealed about the case at the time
was that the rapist was an ex-convict.
Cho Du-sun was a repeat offender who served a total of 10 years and four
months in jail under charge of injury resulting from rape back in 1983 and 14
other offenses.
After he was released, he lived freely, with no restrictions or supervision.
But on the morning of Dec. 11, police say Cho kidnapped a girl, referred to by
the pseudonym Na-young in this article, who was on her way to school in Ansan,
southwest of Seoul.
The 57-year-old Cho took the girl to a toilet in a nearby church, strangled
and beat her unconscious, then raped her. The girl suffered devastating internal
injuries, losing 80 percent of her colon and genital organs. She underwent eight
hours of surgery but many of her lower organs remain completely
dysfunctional.
The rapist was sentenced to 12 years in prison. After that, he will have to
wear a traceable electronic anklet for seven years, and his personal information
will be made available to the public for five years.
The Korean public was outraged at the sentence, which many say was too light.
The court was criticized for being too lenient on Cho because it used a
provision in the law that allows courts to reduce punishments for offenders who
were under the influence of alcohol when a crime is committed. The court reduced
Chos sentence because he was weaker mentally and physically.
This is not the first case of child sexual assault to incite a public outcry.
The rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Yongsan District in 2006 shocked
and angered the nation. The nation was thrown into turmoil again when two young
girls, Hye-jin and Ye-seul, aged 11 and 8, were kidnapped, sexually assaulted
and strangled in Anyang in 2007.
When the cases came to light, both the government and the opposition parties
proposed countless measures against sexual offenders, but they, too, eventually
grew silent.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of children became the victims of sexual
abuse. The number of children under 13 years of age who were the victims of
sexual abuse increased nearly twofold over a three-year period, from 738 cases
in 2005 to 1,220 in 2008, according to the statistics from the National Police
Agency.
To discourage sexual offenders from becoming repeat offenders, Korea began
using an electronic anklet monitoring system in September 2008. The anklets
monitor the movements of convicted sexual offenders around the clock. Currently,
a total of 162 criminals are being tracked, including seven sexual offenders
convicted of committing crimes against children under the age of 13.
The operation is overseen by the Seoul Probation and Police Office in
Hwigyeong-dong, Dongdaemun District. A large screen in the middle of the office
shows a map of Korea and the criminals locations are indicated by a small green
light. The green light turns from yellow to red and an alarm goes off whenever
the anklet is a certain distance away from the criminal or when the battery
dies. The alarm also goes off when criminals try to remove the anklet. The
system is updated every three minutes.
Criminals cuffed with traceable anklets feel pressured, which we hope will
prevent them from committing a second offense, Hong Jung-won, head of the Seoul
Probation and Police Office, said.
Among the 498 criminals with anklets, only one has been convicted for the
same crime twice since the law went into effect in September last year. Thanks
to the tracking device, the offender was caught by the police within 20
hours.
But Hong added that only a few offenders are barred from going near schools
or specific areas, so the device has limitations as a means of preventing
recidivism.
An electronic tracking anklet
For example, Cho will be cuffed
with the anklet after he is released from prison but there is nothing in his
sentence preventing him from going near elementary schools or the victims
house. Thats why the Justice Ministry recently proposed additional
countermeasures, including an extension of the monitoring period from the
original 10 to 15 years.
Among the countless measures proposed for sexual offenders, the electronic
anklet system was the one adopted most quickly. When the system was first
proposed in 2005, the government received heavy criticism from numerous civic
groups that said it would violate offenders human rights. But right after the
Yongsan rape and murder case of 2006, the public gave its support to the system
and the government, which had up to that point been slow in implementing tougher
restrictions for child sexual offenders, began introducing new bills to the
National Assembly. The bill on the electronic anklet monitoring system was
signed in April 2007. Implementation of the law was moved up two months ahead of
schedule when the Ansan rape and murder case arose.
In order to minimize the infringement on the offenders human rights, the
device had to be light and small, and the government spent up to 8 billion won
($6.8 million) to develop an appropriate device.
Another issue that arose with these cases was the question of whether to make
public the identities of people convicted of murder, rape, robbery or
kidnapping. When a bill was proposed in 2004, the National Human Rights
Commission of Korea had strong objections to it, again, because they believed
that publicizing the identities of these people would violate their human
rights. But the bill was passed in August 2007 after the 2006 Yongsan District
case.
In June this year, it was announced that the identities of criminals (name,
photo and address) would be available online beginning next year.
In reality, most of the measures that have been announced have been delayed
due to insufficient funds. Another reason is that momentum tends to decrease
after the initial fury over a crime begins to dissipate.
Advocates for the victims of sexual violence point to another problem.
The anger toward the offender from the general public is so high that most
measures are overly focused on strengthening punishments, Lee Yun-sang, head of
the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, said.
The reporting rate for cases of child sexual violence is relatively low
compared to other crimes, she said, adding that she hopes to see more measures
to facilitate reporting that also protect the victims once they report a crime.
The current reporting rate is slightly over 6 percent, she said.
Meanwhile, numerous womens organizations have rolled up their sleeves to
enact a provision that would nullify the Korean law that says the court can
reduce the sentences of those who commit crimes while intoxicated.
The Seoul Probation and Police Office in Hwigyeong-dong,
Dongdaemun District, tracks the locations of criminals 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. [JoongAng Ilbo]
When Chos prison term was reduced from a life
sentence to a mere 12 years because the court allowed for the fact that he was
intoxicated when he committed the crime, a countless number of citizens signed
petitions against the decision both online and off-line.
The prosecution said it was problematic that the law is applied to one in
every three sexual assault cases but is rarely applied to homicides.
Modifying the law is important but changing the lenient social convention
toward sexual assault is just as crucial, Lee said.
Things are starting to change. Yoon Duk-kyung of the Korean Womens
Development Institute said, Many of the laws began to change after the Hye-jin
and Ye-seul case of 2007.
New measures such as having separate prisons for sexual offenders, mandating
up to 90 hours of education for sexual offenders convicted of crimes against
children under the age of 13, or providing psychiatric help for those with
mental disabilities are currently being tested.
Additional reporting by Yim Seung-hye, contributing writer.
By Kim Jung-soo [estyle@joongang.co.kr]
Source: JoongAng Daily
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