Punishment for Rape in Korea

This is my blog and in it are my words or reconstructions of other people's words after listening to lectures and sharing what I learned. However, once in a grand blue moon do I introduce whole texts of writings of others. This following essay was written by one of my students, Ahn Ji Sung, and was a paper filled with great content based on research. The style of writing was compare/contrast, and of the 120 or so papers I received, Ji Sung's struck me as important to understanding about Korea and its social and legal systems that are rapidly changing (and needing to be further changed) as society is more and more affected by the greed of materialism and losing its centuries-old Confucian values which had intrinsicaly become social controls for maintaining "honorable" bahavior. The text is hers in entirity minus two unclear pronoun changes, and has been reproduced here by permission:

"Rape is one of the most serious crimes, and today there is a lot of controversy in Korea over the appropriate degree of punishment for it. Most Koreans think their punishment for sexual assault is relatively weak compared to other foreign countries in regard to three aspects. First, the maximum level of punishment for rape indicates a huge difference between Korea and other countries. Korean sex offenders are generally imprisoned for the maximum of seven years which is too generous considering they can be sentenced to death in China and Yemen, and they might go through surgical castration in Germany. Also, it was not until November 24, 2010 that Korea started to release identities of these sex offenders. Finally, Korea is coming up with issues of punishing child sex offenders. They are generally jailed for four to seven years and get even lighter sentences if they were drunk during the incidents. However, in China, people who are charged with raping children under 14 years old are sentenced to death without any exception. Also, child sex offenders in Britain are sentenced to life in prison regardless of the gravity of the offense and are even imprisoned for 10 years if they just make children see them having sexual relationships. In New Zealand, after being released from prison, those offenders are under police surveillance by GPS system for life and in Malaysia, they are imprisoned for the maximum of 60 years and get five lashes officially."

(unclear conclusion omitted but the content was phenomenal)

The Origin of a Blog

With great speculation I begin to post some words and thoughts on my daily life and travels in Korea. I have always spurned the diary and denied the effort of keeping a journal for the mere reason that someone would seize my thoughts and those thoughts would cease to be mine. But perhaps it's time to compile a collection of memories and adventures to not only share with others but to revive the spirit of discovery in what was once so vibrantly new and culturally stimulating to me.

While others romanticize my foreign life and "exotic" interactions, I have grown accustomed to the differences and they no longer appear different or unusual to me. My camera is tired of kimchi and ancient palaces nestled between soaring scrapers, and I am bored with stories of plastic surgery and movie talents. I have adjusted, adapted, assimilated to a large extent. But there are cultural points that I see almost daily that demonstrate small cultural changes and that can be traced back to historical origins, and these still inspire me as I am interested in the Korean present and how it is so strongly but subtly linked to the past. Deciphering the cultural entanglement of past and the present, which rewrites the past, is challenging! And this is what I shall write about. Therefore, by beginning my blog I hope to sharpen my interests in what has become the usual for me, and once again avidly look for the unusual in the mundane, the ordinary, the Korean.