 A scene from the movie 밅hildren,?which is based on a true story of 5 missing children. The film has renewed a movement to abolish the statute of limitations on crimes victimizing children. / Courtesy of Lotte Entertainment |
By Kim Rahn
A movie involving the true story about the disappearance of five children is drawing attention on crimes targeting children, and the public is moving to abolish the statute of limitations for such offenses.
The film, which drew about 770,000 viewers to the cinema for the first four days of screening since Feb. 17, is based on the “frog boys,” five elementary schoolchildren in Daegu who went missing on March 26, 1991 after going to a nearby mountain to catch frogs.
For over a decade some 500,000 police officers and soldiers were mobilized to find them in the largest number of personnel for a single missing persons’ case. There were more than 550 false reports until their remains were finally found on Sept. 26 in 2002 at a construction site. The forensic team concluded they were murdered.
Without catching the criminal, the 15 years statute of limitations for murder expired on March 25, 2006, leaving the case permanently unsolved. If the criminal is found now, he or she will not be punished.
Even though the legislation already extended the statute of limitations to 25 years in 2007, a move to abolish it for crimes against children has been ignited.
The producer of the film started collecting signatures from people for the move earlier this month, aiming to have more than 100,000 to urge the government to revise the related laws.
So far about 45,000 people have signed up both online and offline.
The Korea Child Welfare Association said it approves of the efforts. “It is so heartbreaking if a person committing a brutal act escapes punishment only because enough time has passed. The statute of limitations should be scrapped for not only crimes victimizing children but also those targeting females and the disabled,” the association official Kim Myeong-geun said.
The National Organization for Finding Missing Children and Family also called for the government to abolish the statute of limitations for murders of children, women and the disabled.
“The families of the five children and other missing people suffer from great pain. Those committing inhumane crimes should not be given such leniency,” Na Joo-bong, head of the organization, said.
The organization is also promoting a law to allow private detective services.
“Once the statute of limitations for a crime expires, police don’t investigate the case any longer and the criminal has no more risk of getting caught. We hope private detectives can continue the probes afterward by receiving the case records from the police in order to continue searching for the truth,” Na said.
