Korea is considering expanding the use of chemical castration of sex offenders and putting repeat criminals under closer watch with growing calls for tougher measures against rapists and pedophiles, government officials said Monday.
Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik and senior officials from related agencies agreed to adopt stricter measures to curb sex offenses and increase staff to monitor rapists to prevent high-risk criminals from slipping through loopholes.
South Korea's parliament last year passed a bill on chemical castration for convicted offenders who prey on minors under the age of 16, but the system is still in an early stage. Prosecutors earlier this month requested a court order for chemical castration of a 30-year-old pedophile for the first time in the nation.
In response to the growing public calls for more severe punishment of sex criminals, the ruling Saenuri Party said Sunday it will push to drastically expand the use of chemical castration to help reduce sexual desire in convicted sex offenders.
South Korea is the first country in Asia to introduce this type of treatment, although Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and the U.S. state of California have used it for years.
The government also said it will hold regular consultations about high-risk sex offenders who have been ordered to wear electronic anklets and double the monitoring to heighten the effectiveness of the system, which was put in place in 2008.
The latest move comes after the current monitoring system came under attack after a convicted sex criminal attempted to rape a woman in eastern Seoul before stabbing her to death earlier this month, although the suspect was wearing an electronic tracking device at the time. A series of unprovoked attacks against women and children have further fueled widespread public concern lately.
The government will conduct special monitoring of 20,000 repeat sex offenders and track the latest location of convicts whose residence is not stable.
It will also push to revise a bill to allow police the legitimate right to collect information about repeat criminals, while stepping up patrols in crime-prone areas and increasing street lights and surveillance monitoring cameras.
The government will establish a database that classifies crimes by motivation and tactics and train investigators to effectively handle high-risk sex offenders, officials said. (Yonhap)
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