Bangs Head Against Wall for the Umpteenth Time

Look about the English speaking section of K-Blogland and you will encounter no end of posts on Korea's crap record in punishing sex offenders over the last little while. For a start see Gusts of Popular Feeling, for a primer. Amazingly the Korean side of the Internet has also been up in arms of late especially after the case of Na Young, a little girl raped and disfigured by a drunken 57 year old man who received little more than a slap on the hand by way of punishment. See Korea Beat here.

Is it just me, or has there been a decided increase in sex crimes being committed, (or just reported?) over the last year or so?

Either way - Korea has a significant problem dealing with sex offenders, especially since people who commit crimes facing less than a 3 year prison sentence have their records wiped clean after 5 years on non-offending. I stand to be corrected on that one but bring it up in light of the fact that as a foreigner I have to produce my Criminal Record (or to the point, lack thereof) every five minutes, despite the fact that it wouldn't prove if I was a sex offender or not.

So how many Foreigners have been found to be kiddie fiddlers in the last 3 years?

Two. (And even then, that's in the category "Sexual Violence" which may or may not incorporate paedophilia.

How many Koreans?

Lots. There's the Na-Young case, A 55 year old Mr Kim taking advantage of an ADHD elementary school student, A Mr Kim in Busan was found guilty of having sex with a teenage runaway, then there was the case of two dudes pimping out two middle school girls....The List, unfortunately, goes on.

So you will understand the proverbial spitting of the proverbial coffee all over the computer monitor when this evening I read this:

Foreign Pedophiles to Face Permanent Deportation

Surprisingly This one wasn't penned by Kang Shin Who.

From the article:

The Ministry of Justice said Thursday it will revise immigration rules to ban foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children from re-entering Korea permanently.

All two of them.

Of course The Foreign Paedophiles are a greater threat than the home-grown Han-Kiddie Fiddlers, even the article says that right?

The government has announced a package of measures against sex offenders after the Supreme Court upheld a lower-than-expected prison term handed down to Cho Doo-soon, a 57-year-old man convicted of kidnapping and brutally raping a nine-year-old girl.

Cho, given a 12-year-term, is now in prison for class-A criminals in North Gyeongsang Province. The victim, widely known by her alias Na-young, suffered incurable physical and mental damage.

Of course, because every foreigner I know is likely to get drunk, molest a child and then disfigure her by sticking a broom handle permanently and only get 12 years.

Jeebus H. Christ Esq.!

But wait, here comes the head thumping moment, because, as you well know, not only is it foreigners, but specifically it is E2 visa holders that are the scourge of Korean Society and it's children:

...Rep. Lee Joo-young of the ruling Grand National Party urged the ministry to tighten the rule on E-2 visa issuance, arguing it’s so lax that many convicted foreigners attempt to cross borders with legal residential status. The legislator did not disclose the exact number of foreigners caught for the violation.

Under the law, E-2 visa applicants are mandated to submit records on their criminal histories and health check-ups particularly on AIDS and drug use, which are issued by their country of origin.

All two of them.

I used to think a T-shirt, in Korean stating I was not American might go a long way to ingratiating me to my Korean hosts.

From now on I will just hand out copies of my Criminal Record Check and AIDS test results. (Neither of which go any way in proving that I'm not a paedophile, but you know, nothing like a bit of pragmatism.)

Thankfully a modicum of sense seems to be coming from the parliamentary opposition:

Earlier this month, a group of lawmakers of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) proposed a bill, which will make it impossible to reduce the punishment of sex offenders on the grounds that they were drunk at the time of the crime and thus unable to make sound judgement.

It also aims at removing the statute of limitations on rape cases. At present, it ranges from one to 25 years depending on the seriousness of the crime.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to clean up the bloody mess on the wall....

----

BTW Korea Times it's spelt "paedophile."

Comments

[Chris in South Korea]

In American spelling, 'pedophile' is correct :)

Being deported is quite a different story than being imprisoned. You may lose your freedom to live in a given country, but you don't lose the ability to live a free life. I wonder if your Korean record (for better or worse) will follow you into other countries.

With Korea's immigration the way it is, I wonder if their record keeping system can handle the 'permanent deportation' - hopefully this isn't the same system / mindset behind expunging not-so-old crimes.

BTW, I realize this is a minor quibble, but is there any way to change the color of your links? Black text and black links make it hard to tell what's clickable without mouse-browsing. Bold / underline works great as well if you want to keep the same color scheme :)

[Stafford]

@Chris
minor quibble fixed with decent monitor.
:)

[Brian]

Good points here. I linked to it this morning.

Please don't think I'm piling on, but I agree the links are a little hard to see. They are slightly darker, but is there another way to do it?