By Kim Heung-sook
Freelance Columnist

An eight-year-old boy in Seoul became a hero last week for saving his younger sister from an alleged sex offender, when American Jennifer Schuett was enjoying a moment of a sad and tough mission accomplished owing to the arrest of a man who kidnapped, raped and nearly murdered her 19 years ago.

``Throughout this journey, I've had two main goals," Schuett, 27, said on CNN of her revelation in September about her painful past and efforts to catch the culprit. ``And they were to find the man who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and attempted to murder me 19 years ago so that he could not hurt anyone else. And to use my voice in telling my story to as many people as I possibly could over the years in hopes that I may encourage other victims of violent crimes to stand up and speak out against criminals."

The bad man, a 40-year-old welder, was arrested last week, two weeks after Schuett publicly expressed her wish to bring her attacker to justice. New DNA testing and other evidence made the arrest possible, reports say. If convicted with attempted murder charge, the man may face up to life sentence.

The Seoul boy was playing with his five-year-old sister and other children in his neighborhood playground when the 45-year-old Ham picked up his little sister and began to touch her behind, murmuring, ``You are cute. What's your name?"

The boy was aghast as all others, but quickly remembered what he had learned at school. He quietly turned from the man and called his mom on his mobile phone. Ham was caught by police on the spot. The man was a repeater, who had been charged with sexually abusing a five-year-old girl in 2002.

The case could pass as nothing if the nation was not in an uproar over a 57-year-old man who had been convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl in a basement restroom in Seoul in December last year. Cho Doo-soon took the girl from her way to school and raped her under the influence of alcohol. He got a 12-year jail term from judges who thought he was eligible to leniency as he was ``feeble physically and mentally" due to intoxication. Cho was also a repeater, who was sentenced to three years in 1983 charged with rape and inflicting injuries, and could get life imprisonment for his latest crime.

I wonder how the judges could neglect the fact that the ``feeble" man was strong and sober enough to pull the girl's organs out of her body in an effort to wash away the proofs of his crime with piped water and pushed them back. How could they hand down only 12 years of imprisonment to Cho, stating that the girl ``suffered serious injuries to her anus and private parts and will have to live with the handicap throughout her lifetime?" The girl underwent an eight-hour-long operation that barely saved her life.

One of the most shameful facts is that the nation could not know the inhumane crime had Cho not appealed the case to the higher court for a lesser term. The prosecution that indicted him didn't appeal to the Supreme Court.

Last year alone in Korea, a total of 1,220 children suffered sexual violence or 3.3 such crimes were committed a day. The number of victims under 13 years of age is increasing by 10 percent annually. When those aged between 13 and 20 are included, the victims numbered seven a day or one victim in every three and a half hours.

While the numbers are alarming, frustrating is the leniency of judges and prosecutors towards the criminals. According to a 2007 analysis of sexual crimes against children and juveniles, the wrongdoers got fines in 774 (42.1 percent) of the 1,839 convicted cases, and stay of execution was granted for 562 (30.5 percent) cases. The 562 included 23.2 percent of the rapists whose victims were under 13 years of age. Last year, 549 were convicted for sex crimes against children under 13 and only 217 of them got sentences limiting freedom.

All victims can't be as brave as Schuett, and we need to encourage them to stand up for themselves and others like she did. Prevention is most desirable, but when these crimes happen, maximum punishment should be enforced on the culprits. The statute of limitations of three to 10 years for sex-related crimes should be scrapped from Korean laws. If America had had these laughable clauses in effect, Schuett's attacker would have been mocking her efforts today.


kimsook@hotmail.com