The state of "completely lost judgment and etc." is called mentally defective person. Psychosomatic disorders include nervous breakdown, alcoholism, senility, and mental illness. In Korea, there is a law that allows perpetrators of psychosomatic disorder to be commuted. According to Article 10 of the Korean Criminal Code, :
1 The behavior of those who are not able to distinguish things or make decisions due to mental and physical disabilities is not punished
2 The behavior of a person with a weak ability in the preceding clause due to mental or physical disability will reduce their sentences.
3 The provisions of previous Paragraph 2 shall not apply to the actions of a person who foresees the occurrence of risks and causes mental or physical disorders with their own will.
If the perpetrator is alcoholic, depressed or ill, or has a disability, they are punished with a slap on the wrist for not being equal to the pain the victim suffered. By the law, countless people commit crimes and are getting away with a slap on the wrist. In the end, only the victims are dying twice. – intro.
The first reason that the law should be revised is the child rape case, 'Na Young's case'. In December 2008, a drunken man took an 8-year-old girl to a church toilet and raped her. Because of this incident, the girl has to rupture the anal and sphincter muscles, to cut the genital, large intestine, and small intestine, and to live on a bowel line all her life. The life of a girl was ruined, but the perpetrator was sentenced to 12 years in prison for not committing the crime on purpose, and he leaves in 2020. This case is still considered to be the biggest reason for the revision of Article 10 of the Criminal Code, and this case led to a new law that does not constitute Article 10 for child sexual assault.
-Article 19 of the Criminal Act: Article 10 -1, 2 and 11 of the 「Criminal Act」 may not apply when a person commits sexual violence crimes against children or adolescents in the state of mental or physical disorders caused by drinking or drugs.
Recently, there has been a growing public call for the law to be abolished. Due to a recent incident, October 14, 2018, one innocent part-timer died in a PC room in Gangseo-gu, Seoul. The guest asked part-timer to clean his seat, and he immediately cleaned it up, but the guest suddenly came back and asked part-timer to refund the money. He asked the guest to wait a few minutes for the refund to be handled by the manager, but the guest threatened to interrupt his business and kill him, so he called the police and the police returned the guest to his home. However, the perpetrator picks up his knife at home and stabs the victim's face and neck 30 times and the victim dies of excessive bleeding. The perpetrator said that he committed the crime hence even the part-timer seemed to ignore him. The case was a lot of public consent, the biggest point is that the assailant submitted a certificate to the court that he had been depressed for 10 years in order to be commuted. Many people have filed petitions on the presidential homepage for the elimination of Article 10 of the Criminal Code, and one million people have now agreed to this petition. The Presidential Commissioner is preparing an answer directly to this article, and people are focusing on whether the law will be revised.
The law that allows the perpetrators of psychosomatic disorders to be commuted is not a universal institution. In the United States, Japan, China, and other countries, the perpetrators of psychosomatic disorders are not commuted but rather punished severely. "The probability that a criminal in the United States has been acquitted and released due to a psychosomatic disorder is lower than the probability of suffering from snakebite in New York City." ( E.C. Miller.)
Article 10 of the Criminal Code states that if a person has no will, he is not guilty and can not be punished. Due to the law that respects the rights of the perpetrators first without considering the suffering of the victims, there are now many criminals who abuse the law. Criminals who have committed alcoholic, have suffered depression are not subject to great punishment. Currently, Korean society has become 'the world to be slaughtered', and the victims become 10 times and 100 times more suffering than their suffering. As in other countries, such as the United States and China, perpetrators of psychosomatic disorders should be subject to heavy penalties, and the human rights of victims should be more respected than the human rights of offenders
