Death penalty may become campaign issue

By Jung Min-ho

Will a new leadership in Korea resume the death penalty?

Presidential candidate Park Guen-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party stated her position on capital punishment Tuesday when she said “sex crimies committed against underage children have to be combated by serious punishment including the death penalty.”

Park’s statement re-ignited debate over the issue which has been put on the back burner during the election campaign. Advocates of capital punishment began pushing the issue in the media in the aftermath of a spate of shocking sex offenses over the last several months. This also pushed Park’s two liberal rivals Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo to clarify their positions on the issue.

“The death penalty issue seems likely to return to the discussion table because politicians are currently in a position where they have to boost their poll numbers by any means possible,” Lee Yoon-ho, professor at Department of Police Administration of Dongguk University, said. “Given the fact that the vast majority of people support capital punishment, it is a convenient card for a conservative party to use against the opposition.”

In fact, an increasing number of people support the death penalty in the wake of horrendous sex offenses that gripped the nation this year. According to the latest Realmeter survey released on Sept. 5, 69.9 percent of respondents said they would support capital punishment, while only 18.5 percent said it should be abolished. The number of death penalty supporters is undoubtedly rising because previous polls show 45.1 percent people supported it in 2006 and 57 percent did in 2008.

“On the other hand, it isn’t an issue the opposition wants to talk about openly because it will instantly have a negative impact on their popularity,” Lee said. “And it is also hard for the conservatives to sidestep accusations of being populists because the deterrent effects of the death penalty have never been proven. Besides, there are possibilities and actual cases when innocent people have been executed.”

In the United Kingdom in 1950, Timothy Evans was executed for murdering his daughter Geraldine. But 15 years later, an official inquiry found out that his neighbor John Reginald Halliday Christie was responsible for the crime. The shocking truth prompted the UK to first suspend capital punishment in 1965, although it remained a possible sentence for specific offenses such as piracy and treason up to 1998. The last executions in Britain, by hanging, were carried out in 1964.

Some people were also victimized in Korea because of wrongful and controversial executions, including eight people executed for demonstrating against Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship in 1975. The eight were arrested by the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) for violating the National Security Law, and executed within 20 hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling on April 8 that year.

A commentator on sex education, Koo Sung-ae said Tuesday that preventing such crimes is what matters the most.

“Evidently, management is more important than punishing the criminals after the offenses occur. Thus, the next leader should be able to provide specific ways to prevent sex crimes against children. Just killing the criminals won’t help in terms of reducing the crimes,” Koo said.

In Korea, a person can be sentenced to death but no executions have taken place since Dec. 30 1997, when 23 people ― 18 men and 5 women ― were hanged.

“I believe that the government is doing a good job of dealing with the issue where the courts can sentence but don’t execute. That way, the government can appease people who support the punishment, while protecting its image in the international community in which the death penalty is considered as a moral contradiction when the law states: do not kill,” Lee said.