By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Lawmakers are seeking to make it mandatory for convicted sex offenders to wear an electronic anklet tracking device for 10 years from the current five.
A bill, which requires convicted sex offenders to wear the device with a Global Positioning System (GPS) for five years to monitor their whereabouts, got the National Assembly approval last year. It goes into effect from October this year.
Rep. Park Sei-hwan of the governing Grand National Party (GNP), an architect of the bill, submitted an amendment of the bill Saturday, whose core elements are extending the mandate period of these people's wearing the GPS tool five more years and making it effective a month earlier than scheduled.
``Society has witnessed a drastically increased number of child sex crime cases in recent days, which are well identified in the Hye-jin and Ye-suel cases. It's time to take tougher measures to prevent these tragic incidents from recurring in the future,'' Park said in the amendment submitted to the parliament.
The two elementary school girls in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, disappeared on Christmas Day last year and were found dead in March.
A man in his late 30s who lived in the girls' neighborhood was found to have killed them after rape attempts.
In a related move, the Ministry of Justice Friday unveiled an electronic anklet and an additional device for communication, which will send a signal automatically to the Korean Probation and Parole Office if it records unusual movement patterns outside a restricted area.
Convicted sex offenders will have to wear the two devices all the time upon release from jail.
The ministry initially planned to adopt an electronic wrist bracelet, but changed it to an anklet, which can easily be concealed.
Under the current law, criminals committing sex crimes against children aged 13 or under or who were convicted twice or more for sex crimes such as rape will be required to wear the devices for five years after they are released.
After the measure was unveiled, civic group activists raised concerns over the possible undermining of human rights of sex offenders.
Facing the issue, the ministry switched the wrist device to the anklet, and sex offenders under 19 are exempt from the regulations.
With the adoption of the GPS tool to track physical location of convicted criminals, Rep. Park said convicted sex offenders or potential criminals would be discouraged from attempting future crime.
In the United States, 23 states used the GPS to monitor convicted sex offenders as of June 2006. The U.S. legislation is a benchmark of the GNP bill passed in the 2007.