Cho Doo-soon's case is something that Koreans have heard of at least once. Cho Doo-soon sexually

▲ Victim`s Picture

assaulted an 8-year-old girl who was on her way to school, causing injuries such as organ damage.

As a result, 80 percent of the victim’s organs, including her genitals and anus, was ruptured. However, Cho Doo-soon fled, leaving the victim unattended. Cho Doo-soon, who committed such a brutal crime, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, seven years in electronic tagging, and five years in prison for his mental and physical weakness.

Cho Doo-soon will be released from prison on December 13, 2020. Ahead of Cho Doo-soon's release from prison, Ansan residents are in a panic. They say that they cannot live comfortably because they are worried, they should prepare to move, they should stop Cho Doo-soon from coming to Ansan, and that they are too anxious about the safety of their daughters.

▲ Ansan Residents` Responses

Is there any way to stop Cho Doo-soon from being released? There is the Cho Doo-soon Act among the laws of South Korea. The Cho Doo-soon Act includes provisions on the regulation of sex offenders, including 1:1 probation, a ban on access to certain people, and restrictions on residential areas, and an extension of the period of electronic anklet attachment according to annual screening. Ironically, the Cho Doo-soon law does not apply to Cho Doo-soon. This is because the Republic of Korea follows the principle of non-criminatory payment. The principle of non-subsidiary of criminal law is that criminal punishment should be based on the law at the time of the act, and even if the law is enacted or revised, the transfer act cannot be applied retroactively. Since the Cho Doo-soon Act does not apply to Cho Doo-soon, the government will install 71 additional CCTVs, designate police posts near Cho Doo-soon's residence, and hire six security experts with three or more levels of various martial arts to frequently patrol and designate dedicated probation officers. These methods require a lot of taxes, and people predict that in the first half of this year alone, 30 sex offenders will have little effect, given that they committed sex crimes again in a society with electronic anklets on and many CCTVs installed.

The mayor of Ansan City filed a petition with the public that he wanted to enact a protection law. The Protection and Acceptance Act is a bill that allows violent criminals to live in separate facilities for a certain period, not in society when they complete their prison terms. The bill had been proposed to the National Assembly several times before, but the law was not enacted due to the opinion that it violates the human rights of criminals.

We have not enacted protective acceptance laws for the human rights of criminals, so now, we must protect victims and other people especially women and children in efficient ways. Cho Doo-soon crime is just one example of several crimes that have become famous, and more criminals will continue to emerge in the future, so an effective system should be set up to prepare for such situations.

October 27, 2020, By Park Hyoin