Whose fault is it?
It might be a simple question but, when it pertains to the suicide of a serial killer in a prison, it becomes a loaded one.
According to officials at the Seoul Detention House, Jeong Nam-kyu used a one meter-long noose made from a plastic trash bag and hanged himself Saturday. The correctional authorities didn't discover Jeong until it was too late. He was taken to a hospital but died Sunday.
A skeleton crew was on duty but there was also no surveillance camera in his cell.
The irony was that the closed circuit television was taken out following a revision in pertinent regulations after human rights organizations called for the dismantling of such devices, calling them an act of privacy intrusion.
For years the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the state-launched but independent watchdog, led the initiative to better protect the rights of inmates.
However, it was against conventional wisdom, considering the mercurial state of mind of prisoners serving heavy sentences, especially ones on death row.
Before the revision, according to prison authorities, death row inmates were watched under surveillance for 24 hours a day through cameras.
They said that it usually takes 15 minutes for one guard to take a tour of the block he is in charge of and that that 15-minute period gave Jeong his window of opportunity. Each block holds 70 to 100 inmates.
This explanation came after criticism targeting prison authorities for reducing the number of guards on duty for the weekend shift, which may have caused a lapse in surveillance which Jeong took advantage of in his suicide attempt.
Now it all goes back to square one: is it necessary to reinstall surveillance cameras in cells where high-risk inmates are staying? Apparently, Jeong's death came so suddenly that the authorities didn't have time to act quickly enough.
Korea has the highest inmate' suicide rate, with 30.5 cases for every 100,000, among OECD countries. Although no executions of death row inmates have been conducted for years, the government is facing increasing domestic pressure to start executions, especially following the serial murder by Kang Ho-soon. But, internationally, many advanced countries are advocating for the abolition of the death penalty.
Jeong's case simply complicates Korea's deliberations on the matter.