On September 22, the KBS program, Sisa Gihoek Ssam, dealt with child sexual abuse following the Cho Du-sun case which was revealed on the Internet. Cho Du-sun raped an 8-year-old girl. However, despite the atrocious act, he was only sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment as he was heavily intoxicated at the time. The public got very angry at the light punishment, and an online signature-seeking campaign spread under the topic of "Child sexual abuse is murder. Impose the maximum penalty by law and have the government compensate the victims."
There are also other child sexual abuse cases in Korea which were treated similarly by the courts. In another case, a male cohabitant, Mr. Kim, and a female cohabitant, Ms. Choi, lived together with Choi’s 8-year-old girl. Kim sexually abused Choi’s daughter for six years, but a high court justice gave Mr. Kim only four years’ imprisonment as Mr. Kim repented what he did and came to an agreement with Choi and the girl.
Compared to the light punishment in Korea, in America, Megan's Law requires every state to have a system for registering sex offenders and to make their information available to the public, though each state has different methods of doing this. People can notice that sex offenders live in their neighborhood and can protect themselves against them. In China, criminals who sexually abuse children under 14 can be sentenced to death; in Japan, their faces and their profiles are publicized on TV and in newspapers. Such ways of punishing criminals isolate them from their communities and help to prevent other possible crimes in the future.
In Korea, we also have a system to make the criminals’ personal information open to the public through revealing criminals’ names, work places, addresses, and photos. However, the general public needs to visit police stations nearby and apply to see the information. We also have an electronic bracelet guard system, so child sex offenders or other sex criminals who committed a crime more than two times have to wear it. Now, even though some sex offenders wear electronic bracelets, a weak point of electronic bracelets is we don’t know what child sex offenders are doing. We know their location, but we don’t know what they are doing in that place. Other sex offenders move freely.
Recently, the government has tried to impose heavier punishment for sex criminals as child sexual abuse crimes have become a critical social issue. Anyone can become a victim of sexual abuse, so we need to pay attention to the matter and try to find possible ways of preventing crimes from happening again and again. The government should also try harder to make more appropriate punishments for the criminals.
