By Lee Suh-yoon
Calls are once again growing for the government to treat juvenile delinquents in the same way it treats adult offenders amid escalating violent crimes by minors who receive less severe penalties.
According to the nation's Juvenile Act, perpetrators aged 14 and under cannot be sent to jail and those under the age of 18, who commit crimes punishable by the death penalty or life imprisonment, can only be given a prison term of up to 20 years.
The latest case that has brought the issue back to the debate was a middle school girl in Incheon who committed suicide in July after having been raped by two classmates who are not subject to jail time thanks to their age.
"Even if the crimes of the perpetrators ― 12 and 13 years old ― are proven true, they will not be subject to criminal punishment due to the Juvenile Act," the victim's sister said in a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website, last month. "The Juvenile Act is unjustifiable and unfair for my little sister who had to go to heaven without realizing her dreams."
Angered by the offenders' light penalty, more than 200,000 have signed it, calling for heavier punishment on the underage perpetrators. The presidential office makes it a rule to reply to a petition that gains more than 200,000 signatures within 30 days of a proposal being registered.
Last month, a group of drunk teenagers beat up a 79-year-old apartment security guard in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, causing him injuries requiring two weeks of medical treatment in hospital.
His grandson posted pictures of the victim's injuries on social media and they were shared online, leading to another petition urging the government to scrap the act or lower the minimum age of criminal liability.
This is not the first time the Juvenile Act has incited public outrage. Similar petitions have already forced formal statements from Cheong Wa Dae, which says harsher punishment is not a fundamental solution to the problem, but is considering lowering the age to 13.
"Examples of other countries show that juvenile crime does not disappear with harsher punishment." The then-Education minister Kim Sang-gon said. "But the current age of 14 for exemption from criminal punishment was set way back in 1953, so there are discussions of lowering it to 13."
The number violent crimes by minors has been on the rise for the last three years, with 1,933 juveniles taken into custody by police last year for rape or physical violence. A total of 39,891 minors were apprehended from 2013 to 2017, or about 218 a day.
In consideration of public outrage, about 30 amendment bills regarding the Juvenile Act, mostly focused on lowering the age limit, are now pending in the National Assembly.
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