The Justice Ministry will hold an international seminar at Korea University and the Supreme Prosecutor's Office on Dec. 10 and 11 on determining the punishment for serious crimes.
According to ministry officials Monday, legal experts from the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany and France as well as Korea are expected to debate a wide range of related issues.
Committees responsible for deciding the severity of punishment for a crime, a pertinent set of standards and the process of revisions will especially be compared on a nation-to-nation basis, the officials said.
"We need to look at our system from the bottom up following the recent public outrage over what was considered too light a sentence imposed on a child molester," a ministry spokesman said. The case he referred to involved Cho Doo-soon, who was sentenced to 12 years for raping an elementary school girl and causing her permanent physical injuries.
The seminar is aimed at bringing a systemic approach to the current way of sentencing that is very much dependent on the legal authorities' sense of law, he said, adding that this will make the legal system more predictable.