Koreans Receive “Unnecessarily Long Prison Terms” Overseas
From Yonhap:
South Korean inmates overseas suffer from excessively heavy prison terms compared to convicts at home, due to cultural differences and language barriers, a lawmaker said Monday.
There were 1,400 South Korean nationals in foreign detention centers as of the end of August, with 6.3 percent, or 228 of them having received jail sentences of 10 years or more, Rep. Im Jong-in of the ruling Uri Party said, quoting data submitted by the Justice Ministry.
In the United States, more than half of the 197 South Korean inmates were serving prison terms of 10 years or longer.
The situation was the same in China where 54 out of 168 Korean prisoners were sentenced to imprisonment of 10 years or more.
Fifteen of them received life in prison or suspended death sentences for drug offenses or fraud, the lawmaker said in a press release.
The punishments are very harsh compared to those in South Korea where those convicted on such charges face maximum sentences of 10 years of imprisonment, he claimed.
“The Justice Ministry must devise measures to save South Korean inmates serving unnecessarily long prison terms in foreign countries after closely analyzing criminal cases involving them and their sentences,” the lawmaker said.
I find it interesting that the Korean media is complaining about overseas Koreans receiving unfair “heavy prison sentences”, while in Korea crimes against foreigners often go unpunished. Let me remind everyone of one of my all time favorite Korean justice system sentences:
The Seoul High Court yesterday overturned the conviction by a lower court of a 49-year old taxi driver who had been charged with the rape of a 19-year old U.S. female soldier.
The man had received a 10-month prison term in the original trial after being convicted of luring the newly-arrived servicewoman from Incheon International Airport to a hotel near there where the woman said he raped her. The woman reported the incident to U.S. military authorities, who asked for assistance from Korean prosecutors. The appeals court ruled that the woman had shown no evidence of having refused the man’s advances, and that he used “not enough violence to constitute rape.”
This guy rapes a US soldier and was freed on appeal when he only originally received a 10 month sentence for the assualt to begin with. Then this same media has the balls to criticize US prison sentences?
