I believe Korea should revise the juvenile law. In Korea, 260,000 people signed the revised petition to strengthen the punishment for juvenile crimes. According to a recent survey by a local polling agency Realmeter, 90 percent of the respondents said they wanted to revise or abolish the law completely. When teenagers commit a big crime, they can get a maximum of twenty years of prison labor. But almost no one gets that. In fact, very few teenagers serve time in prison. Criminals under the age of 14 do community service or are not punished at all. Minors have no criminal record. There are a lot of examples of teenagers escaping from the punishments and juvenile law getting abused. There was an elementary school student murdered in Incheon. The criminal got caught and went to court to be judged. The criminal in the court said, “I want this trial finished before December”. That’s because of juvenile law. She can demand the application of juvenile law because the criminal is a teenager. Similar school violence occurred in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, and Cheonan, Chungnam Province. In these cases, some criminals escaped punishment based on juvenile law.
Like these cases, the problem is that teenagers abuse the law. They stopped fearing the law. Lawmakers, including former police officers, Pyo Chang-won, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, said many teenagers are abusing the law. When middle school students assaulted a student of a similar age in Busan for 90 minutes with a soju bottle, bricks and a steel frame, one of them asked the victim, "Do you think we will go to jail?" They know the level of punishment, since they share information or find information released on the internet. They often mock investigative agencies even after they are caught.
In 2016, there were 23,673 incidents of school violence and 19,968 in 2015. The number reached 19,521 in 2014 and 17,749 in 2013. According to the police, a total of 15,849 teenagers were arrested for serious crimes such as murder, sexual assault and arson between 2012 and 2016. According to crime statistics, physical assault by teenagers almost doubled from 3,600 in 2011 to 6,600 in 2015. Recent data showed that 12.3% of teenagers committed crimes again, maybe because of the low punishment compared to adults. I strongly believe Korea should revise it’s juvenile law.
These are some references.
1) Park, Hyo in. “Korea Juvenile Law.” 대한민국청소년영어뉴스/KOREAN YOUTH ENGLISH NEWS, 26 July 2017, kyen.kr/m/view.php?idx=443.
2) Kim , Bo-eun. “Bullying Sets off Juvenile Law Revision.” TheKoreaTimes, TheKoreaTimes, 27 Sept. 2017, www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/04/181_237079.html.
3) An, haydn. “A Growing Number of Korean Teenagers Are No Longer Afraid of Breaking the Law and Many Call for the Revision of the ‘Juvenile Law.’” Allkpop, Allkpop, 30 Sept. 2020, www.allkpop.com/article/2020/09/a-growing-number-of-korean-teenagers-are-no-longer-afraid-of-breaking-the-law-and-many-call-for-the-revision-of-the-juvenile-law.
Writer: Grace Jun
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