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This is a news blog for my Undergraduate Criminology class at Ewha University in Seoul, South Korea for Spring 2010.
Shaline Tan Yen Ling
ReplyDeleteViolent criminals’ faces to be shown to public
The above case shows a further step taken by the Justice Ministry of Korea as they revised the guidelines in the face of the recent outrage of the child rape-murder in Busan. The revised guidelines will reveal the names and ages of accused sex offenders and vicious criminals, and allow the media to photograph their faces. The new guideline should also require prosecutors to bring [psychological] experts when they question young victims. While we understand this improvised step is aimed at attempting to eradicate child rape or to bring down the number of child rape, it is inevitably making the situation worse than before. With the media being allowed to photograph the criminals’ faces and to be shown in public, it is going to increase the public hysteria about crime in their society. This is also emphasizing street crimes committed by the poor, the young, and minority group members, while at the same time, being able to divert the public from more serious threats of crime and death.
Personally, I believe media should not play a huge role in portraying criminal activities to the public or act as the main disseminator of crime news in the public sphere. The media tend to distort people’s view of crime, as the ultimate aims of media are profit and entertainment. The media will always tend to seek for the most sensational and unusual crimes that fit new themes with moralistic messages. With this new regulations, the Justice Ministry has just jumped into a hole deeper than before – by allowing the media to be involved, the future news will be bombarded with more criminal news as media now have an access, hence a ‘permission’ to report more news on crime.
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http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2919279
Shaline Tan Yen Ling - IES10127
ReplyDeleteViolent criminals’ faces to be shown to public
Suspects in Korea’s worst violent crimes will soon have to show their faces to the public, as the Justice Ministry revises investigative guidelines that previously had hidden suspects from view, multiple sources told the JoongAng Ilbo yesterday.
Under the new regulations, where there is strong evidence of guilt and a public demand to know, prosecutors will be able to release Under the new regulations, where there is strong evidence of guilt and a public demand to know, prosecutors will be able to release the names and ages of accused sex offenders and vicious criminals, and allow the media to photograph their faces.
The new guidelines will be finalized within the month, the sources said. They follow a new package of laws from the National Assembly that provides for harsher punishment of child sex offenders.
Both moves follow national outrage over the brutal rape of an 8-year-old girl known as Na-young by Cho Du-sun, 58, in 2008, and the rape and murder of 13-year-old Lee Yu-ri, who was abducted from her home in February by Kim Kil-tae, 33, a senior prosecutor said.
Before Kim’s arrest in March, suspected criminals wore masks when they appeared before the press. Kim’s photo had been released to the press before his arrest, when he was still wanted for questioning in connection with Lee’s murder. The practice to shield suspects’ faces grew out of human rights concerns, and some experts believe it should still be upheld.
Seo Suk-ho, an attorney at Kim and Chang, warned that unilaterally revealing suspects’ identities against their will violates the presumption of innocence.
But others approved of the soon-to-be adopted regulations.
“If [prosecutors] can accurately describe their charges, revealing a suspect’s identity doesn’t violate the presumption of innocence,” said Moon Jae-wan, a law professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
In a related move, the Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office yesterday issued new guidelines to its 18 district prosecution offices stating that child rape victims do not have to appear in court. Rather than calling the young victims to the stand, prosecutors will be allowed to submit videotaped testimony as evidence.
“The young victims had to face their attackers as they gave open testimony, and there were criticisms that that could deepen their pain,” said prosecutor Lee Yeong-ju.
.....
JiHye Kang
ReplyDeleteDisappearance of a teenager in Kyoungju turned out to be a self-fabricated scenario
This cannot-help-but-laugh case happened in February, 2010. Unfortunately, I could not find the article in English so I translated the whole article.
The story of Kim’s disappearance in January was sensational. It spread very fast over the internet and every people seemed to have their own opinion about what could have happened to this girl’s life. Some people said it was a human trafficking while the other said it was abduction by a sexual offender. But she turned out to be safe at home with parents after a month since her disappearance. It turned out that it was self-fabricated scenario of a runaway.
It is true that the media fueled ungrounded suppositions about her whereabouts. Most of the reports focused on what a good girl she was thus making people have more wild imaginations: abduction, sexual exploitation and so forth. According to our textbook, it says media love the crime composition of a vulnerable victim and heinous villain; this was just how the media wrote about Kim’s missing case. She was a nice and smart student despite of adverse conditions. And since there were no clues of what happened to her or who took her, the media took advantage of the situation and made any possible grim suppositions about the ‘villain’.
However, when she was found, the media’s attitude was totally different. Now they were discussing what kind of punishment would befall her or what kind of punishment would be ‘possible’. Kim, who was an innocent victim of abduction, suddenly became a social predator, the public enemy. I think this is a good example of how media manipulates the public sentiment.
Not only this case shows the impact of media in missing case, it also supports the textbook’s claim that “runaways account for the greatest percentage of missing children” (p.65) and unreliability of statistics. According to the article, she was registered as a “missing” teenager until she ‘came clean’ in February. But we also know that the identical girl was registered as a “missing” teenager under the fake identity; One girl made two missing cases. It surely makes us doubt the reliability of statistics that the possibility of double-registered missing children or teenagers maybe high, exaggerating the danger. Like the city hall interested said in the article, at least in Korea, double family register for double identity is not a movie, it can happen to any teenager runways. Moreover, it also raises reasonable doubt that it might be the tip of an iceberg; she might be just one of many runaways who are registered as “missing” but living with a new identity.
It seems that there were no further reports about her due to her privacy. Too much exposure to media would do no good for her now that she is being accused of a liar. Thus, it is still not known why she had to lie from the first place. This case has some points that are like unmatched puzzle pieces. Whether she left home to break away from domestic violence or any other reasons, we do not know. In the article, the director of the welfare facility where she lived for a year said her parents seemed to be nice people. But people do not put on a sticker saying “I’m a wifebeater” or “I beat up my daughter everyday” stickers on their forehead, do they? It is still highly possible that she could have run away from domestic violence and got caught? Maybe it is an all family fabricated thing. Did not Kim or Lee’s parents watch news about her? Her picture was on TV and internet for a long time. Why was it her uncle to report it to police office? It doesn’t seem to be a one-time mischief of a teenager. Something had to be there for a girl to write a (desperate) letter to get accepted herself to the welfare center. Maybe she was a real good liar and just wanted a parents-free life for a year and decided to come back to reality?
It is still puzzling but it is clear that this case gives food for thought on missing children/teenagers.
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(this is a translation of the article)
ReplyDeleteThe disappearance of a teenager, Kim Eun-Bi, was turned out to be a self-fabricated scenario of a 21-years-old woman. She was reported “missing” after she left school last month. She was “missing” almost for a month.
Kim was a sophomore at Kyoungju Girls’ High school and was living at welfare facility for children and teenagers, “Sung-ae won”. Last month, on 5th, she disappeared after she left school for the welfare facility to submit scholarship related documents. After the facility’s missing report, Kyoungju police office made a special team assigned for her missing case and the team was cooperating with the police office in Yongin, where the signal of her cellphone was detected.
Kim came to the facility by herself in March, 2006 with mom’s letter which said, “I’m a single mom and homeless. This girl has no dad and we are so poor. Please take a good care of her.” Kim, then, said that she had no family register and schooling. The facility gave her a family register and she took GED to get into a high school. Since she was a nice girl for four years, police department focused on abduction as the reason of her disappearance. However, they could not find any clues for a month.
Kim’s whereabouts was confirmed a month after her disappearance. After watching the news about her disappearance, her uncle reported that Kim is at mom’s house in Suwon, Kyung-gi province. Kim came to the police office with her mom and confessed.
But the girl who came to the police was not “Kim”. Her appearance was the same but her name and age were different. She was turned out be “Lee” who was born in 1989, meaning she was not a high school student. It was all lies that she was Kim and born in 1992. Mom’s letter was a lie too. It was not a disappearance or missing but “running away”.
When she got away from home and visited the facility, she was already registered as a missing teenager. Police did not know it was an identical girl because of the different family name.
New family register seems to have been possible because she was a minor in 2006, when she first came to facility, that she was not registered to social security system. Kyoungju City hall interested said, “It is possible for a missing child to get double family register because they are not registered to social system to match the finger print yet.”
Kim’s happening frustrated the people at the welfare facility. The director of the facility confirmed that she met Kim’s parents and they seemed to be good people.
When Kim went to Kyungju Girls’ High School with a fake identity, she often told friends that she kept in touch with her parents. Kim Ju-Hee(18) said “Kim once showed us the text message from her mom and told us her cousin made to some college in Seoul. She said her dad is a famous doctor in Seoul and he had committed a medical malpractice that she had to come all the way here.” But Police claimed there were no such people to be seen as parents according to her phone record since last August.
Therefore, when she first came to the facility, she was already 17. It is no wonder that she could pass GED easily and went to prestigious local high school with good grade. After the happening, there came up the complaints on the high school’s website from parents saying “What will you do to compensate my daughter’s GPA that was damaged by Kim”.
It is still unknown why she lied in 2006 and what life she led before she came to the facility. Police interested said they were planning to investigate details after her mental stabilization.
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http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/02/04/2010020400877.html
Elizabeth Tang
ReplyDeleteThe stark reality of missing children’s families in Korea
“Please end this Hide-and-Seek - The story of missing children’s families”
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This article first starts off by telling us how families in Korea end up being broken up due to the loss of a child in the family. Parents end up getting divorced, and there is the problem of suicide and alcoholism as well. These problems are then transferred onto the other remaining children, either unintentionally or intentionally. Even so, the other children may feel psychological stress from losing one of their siblings.
This stems from the fact that the social system for finding missing children is not well established currently. Missing children cases are handled by two different organizations, name the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Police Agency, and both organizations do not work hand in hand; rather, they seem to be competing to solve the cases. Because of this, on average it takes 840 days and 500 million (Korean) won to find just one missing child. Also, in local police stations, the number of policemen in charge of missing children is on average only two per police station, which only adds to the insufficiency of the current system.
Also, there seems to be a lack of social assistance from the society as a whole. For example, when a child is lost, policemen and others first suspect the missing child’s own family members. Also, as the duration of the search gets longer, people blame the families of missing children for not trying hard enough to find them.
The article then ends with some suggestions to improve on the current system, such as by having the two organizations cooperate to speed up the search process, and training more experts in the police force to handle missing children cases. Other suggestions include implementing laws similar to “Laws for Missing Children” in the US, and also engaging support from the society by showing sympathy for the grieving family.
Personally, I feel that this goes back to the readings which state that we need to not only look at missing children cases from a legal viewpoint, but also address social issues. This article is good proof that the social system is highly lacking in Korea society. It is essential to have strong organizational backing to reassure the society as a form of psychological safety, which would give parents (and family members) a sense of ease even under normal circumstances. On the other hand, the article does touch on how media attention to such cases plays an important role. It was quoted that while the famous Daegu missing children case was highly publicized due to the fact that 5 children disappeared simultaneously, other cases which were not given as much publicity caused more pain to the parents due to the lack of attention from the public in general and the relevant organizations (““The parents of those five children are also broken-hearted, but some feel that the families of other missing children hearts got broken twice. Their cases were of no interest to any media, and they had no one to help them”). This thus has a slight contradiction to the readings where they stated that the media tends to portray such cases as exaggerated, thus causing unnecessary hysteria in the society. It is thus essential to have a good balance of news reports concerning missing children to generate some form of public sympathy and alert organizations to the needs of the families, but too much hype could result in the public over reacting and causing the problem to be blown out of proportion.
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ReplyDeleteUnsettled system for finding missing children
These families’ hearts are broken because of the insufficient systems for finding their missing children. Present missing children cases are handled by two different organizations, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Police Agency, confusing families of missing children. “They seem to compete for the cases, which should be taken care of quickly and thoroughly,” says Na Joo-bong. The research done by “Child Fund,” which analyzed 2207 missing children cases through 2005, says that if the initial countermeasure of missing children was done loosely, on average it takes 840 days and 500 million (Korean) won to find just one missing child.
There are only a few special teams of agents for finding missing children, and usually it is hard to expect those agents’ help, since they have too much work already. Moreover, research done by *Seoul Shinmun* shows that the number of policemen in charge of missing children are on average only two per police station, and those are in concurrent positions.
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http://annals.yonsei.ac.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=638