The history of the death penalty in South Korea (and why it should be abolished)

South Korea hasn’t executed anyone in 10 years, having executed 23 people on December 30, 1997. Learn about the history of the death penalty in South Korea.

 

The death penalty has been practiced in South Korea for so long that its origins are hard to trace, meaning it was practiced before the country even existed as a nation. However, the problems with the death penalty began to manifest themselves in society when it was used as a tool to maintain Japan’s colonial rule over Korea. During this time, Japan mercilessly executed independence activists who were working toward the independence of Korea. This demonstrated how powerless and innocent citizens can be wrongfully victimized by a state’s enforcement of the law. This resulted in many martyrs, including Yoo Yoo-soon, who participated in the 3.1 Hooray Movement; Lee In-young, the commander of the 13th Creative Army, who was arrested for his militant activities; Kang Woo-kyu, who threw a bomb at Governor Saito; Hwang Hoo-soo, the military commander; and Lee Kang-yeon, the captain of the Hoseo. In response, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea abolished the death penalty in Article 9 of the Constitution to eliminate the abuse of the death penalty. After the Japanese occupation, South Korea continued to enact new criminal laws, such as the National Security Act of 1960, the Anti-Communist Act and Punishment of Violent Acts Act of 1961, and the Special Measures for Health Crime Groups Act, which expanded the scope of the death penalty. The military rulers also used these laws to suppress those not in their favor. They summarily executed democracy activists, students and citizens who participated in demonstrations without proper trials. Since the fall of the military in the 1990s and the establishment of true democracy, there have been no executions in South Korea since 1998.
Recently, there have been a number of heinous crimes in South Korea that have led to calls for the death penalty to be reinstated. It’s almost as if the death penalty is a warrior of justice that brings revenge to the worst criminals. However, there are many problems with reintroducing the death penalty, and it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be practiced in South Korea again. I also believe that the death penalty should be abolished. Here are my reasons why I think the death penalty should be abolished.
First, Article 10 of the Korean Constitution states that “All citizens have dignity and worth as human beings and have the right to pursue happiness. The state affirms the inviolable and fundamental human rights of individuals and has the obligation to guarantee them. Similar language is found in the constitutions of many countries. Thus, it is clear that human life has the right to be treated with dignity and respect and not to be deprived of it by other objects. The death penalty is a system that violates this basic human right, the right to life, and is a major obstacle to maintaining human dignity. Nowadays, Korean public opinion argues that a murderer who kills an innocent citizen has already arbitrarily deprived another person of his or her right to life, and that the murderer should be deprived of his or her right to life through the death penalty using the spirit of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ as in the Code of Hammurabi. In other words, there is no need to guarantee the right to life of others and treat them with dignity if they do not recognize their right to life. However, since the murderer is also a human being, disregarding his dignity would be disregarding human dignity, which would lead to a situation where human life as a whole is not protected. So it’s a contradictory argument. And the frequent use of the death penalty can lead to a culture of disrespect for life.
Secondly, the death penalty should be abolished because it does not fulfill the purpose of criminal law: edification through punishment. It is contrary to the spirit of criminal law because punishing a crime with death makes it pointless to reform the offender. It is a judgment that is much more retributive than educational. Also, if a person commits a crime that is punishable by death, a life sentence is enough to isolate them from society without killing them, so there is no need to kill them.
Third, even if we look at the preventive aspect, the preventive effect of the death penalty is extremely small because most people who commit capital crimes are either not of sound mind and unable to make good judgments or commit suicide after committing the crime. In other words, heinous criminals who commit murder or other crimes that are punishable by death do not have the psychological capacity to judge what kind of punishment they deserve due to the fear and terror that comes with committing the crime. In other words, they already know the punishment is death, and they know from their social life that the crime they are committing is bad enough to warrant the death penalty, but in the moment of the crime, their rational judgment is clouded and they act as if the fear of the death penalty does not exist. This is especially true for people who are mentally ill or those who commit crimes accidentally. In the case of premeditated killers, they often don’t think seriously about the punishment of the death penalty even while they are planning the murder. In addition, the recent occurrence of heinous crimes shows that the criminal law itself is not very preventive, as people commit the same crimes despite knowing the punishment for similar crimes through various media. Therefore, the existence of the death penalty, which is considered the best among criminal laws, is not likely to have a significant preventive effect.
Fourth, the social perception of abolishing the death penalty is changing. Since the 1990s, as true democracy began to take hold and develop, the death penalty, which was once considered similar to other criminal laws, has been criticized for its many problems. In addition, although the public opinion in South Korea is still more in favor of the death penalty, the number of people calling for its abolition is gradually increasing. And the public opinion in favor of the death penalty is not very reliable because it changes greatly depending on whether a heinous crime has occurred or not at the time of the poll. The National Assembly is also proposing bills such as the ‘Special Bill on the Abolition of the Death Penalty’. This law argues that the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, that it is unfair for a person to decide on a person’s life, and that the death penalty should be abolished and replaced with life imprisonment in line with the trend of abolishing the death penalty in other countries around the world. In addition to these internal arguments, let’s look at the external ones. In December 1977, the Stockholm Declaration was issued, which included an unconditional opposition to the death penalty. It also states that as a condition for joining the European Union (EU), a country must have abolished the death penalty. In this atmosphere, a growing number of countries have abolished the death penalty. Furthermore, when the resolution on a moratorium on executions was passed on December 8, 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “This is evidence that we are moving towards the ultimate abolition of the death penalty.”
Finally, the death penalty should be abolished because of the possibility of wrongful convictions. Unlike other criminal laws, the death penalty is characterized by the fact that once it is carried out, the defendant is dead and cannot be returned to the state of affairs that existed before the execution. If it is discovered that the verdict was wrong before the actual execution, the person’s innocence is proven, but if it is discovered after the execution, the state has used the law to murder a person, which creates a huge problem. Because of this problem, the death penalty is not administered by a single judgment, but rather by a three-judge system to reduce the chance of a wrong verdict, but there is always a chance of a wrong verdict because not all the truth is revealed during the trial process. In addition, in the case of various heinous crimes that have recently caused public opinion to call for the reinstatement of the death penalty, once the suspect is caught, the social condemnation of the suspect is enormous even before the facts of their crime become clear, making it difficult for the judge to judge the case fairly. Therefore, it is impossible to completely eliminate the probability of misjudgment because at least some emotions will affect logical judgment. An example of this is the case of Alfred Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus, a Frenchman of Jewish descent born in Alsace, was an artillery captain who was arrested for treason in 1894 for providing military secrets to Germany. During the evidence gathering process, Alfred Dreyfus’s handwriting and the handwriting of the classified documents he provided were examined and found to be different, but the investigators determined that the handwriting of the classified documents and Alfred Dreyfus’s handwriting were the same. As a result, Alfred Dreyfus was unanimously sentenced to life imprisonment by a court-martial. His appeal was denied and he was exiled to the French island of Guinea. In 1898, the case was reopened by order of the Secretary of the Army, and another culprit was identified and Alfred Dreyfus was exonerated. However, the Ministry of the Army at the time insisted that there had been no mistake and defended the real culprit. However, in 1906, Alfred Dreyfus was acquitted in a retrial, and the decision was a case of prejudice and misjudgment against Jews. If the wrong decision is made and the death penalty is already carried out, it becomes ambiguous who to hold accountable for this judicial murder, since the judge and lawyer are also guided by the law and the evidence, and cannot be held fully accountable.
There are many other reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. The death penalty is an inhuman and barbaric law that was created at a time when human dignity was not properly discussed. In other words, it is not in the spirit of the times and must be abolished.