The Ministry of Justice said Thursday it will revise immigration rules to ban foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children from re-entering Korea permanently.
This is the latest in a series of government measures to keep sexual predators away from society.
If endorsed, it will become the toughest discipline against foreign rapists. The plan was made public during a parliamentary inspection of the ministry held in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province.
All this comes after plenty of cases of Koreans committing sex crimes but getting light sentences, ranging from reduced jail time for being drunk to getting suspended sentences for breaking into a woman's house and raping her. Last year four men were found to have raped a disabled girl in their family repeatedly over seven years, but the judge put the child back into their custody. There is an increased interest in all this recently after a man was given a 12-year sentence for anally raping an 8-year-old girl and then using a plunger on her, destroying her anus and intestines. Nonetheless, in addition to the coverage of the "Na-young Incident" and other sex crimes against children, in the last week we've seen articles in the English-language press with headlines like "Foreign Sex Offenders on Rise" and "More sex crimes committed by foreigners," although the indictment rate among foreigners is less than that of Koreans, even according to that Korea Herald article:
While the nation's average indictment rate for sexual crimes was 45 percent in 2008, the rate for foreigners was 39.7 percent over the past eight years.
Anyway, Stafford at The Chosun Bimbo took a couple good swings at today's article already. There are a few things worth pointing out, though I will preface my comments by saying that one foreign criminal is one too many. However, this reporter is clearly a graduate of the Kang Shin-who School of Journalism, and couldn't go more than three paragraphs without conflating issues or bringing E-2 visa holders into it.
Stafford writes that there have been two cases of foreigners committing sexual violence in the last three years, though that doesn't necessarily include pedophilia. That brings up another flaw in the article, it uses rape interchangably with pedophilia. Indeed, I don't recall any case of a foreign pedophile operating in Korea, though of course there was Christopher Paul Neil who was arrested in Thailand, and I know of a few other cases with connections to Korea.
Interestingly, after the Christopher Paul Neil arrest in 2007---Neil taught in Korea, but neither had a criminal background nor an E-2 visa---there was a series about foreign child molesters and Korea. Korea announced it would prohibit certain sex offenders from entering the country; of course, there was no prospect of them ever doing so, or even leaving the state for that matter. From the Chosun Ilbo last year:
South Korea has banned the entry of 21 Americans convicted of sexually abusing children under 14.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security forwarded to the Ministry of Justice a list of 21 American child sex offenders known to travel frequently to Asian countries. The ministry immediately decided to permanently blacklist the offenders from entering Korea.
The U.S. has begun providing a list of child sex offenders to Asian nations such as Thailand in order to crack down on Americans traveling abroad for sex tourism. South Korea is among the nations receiving the list.
A ministry official said American sex offenders could commit sex crimes against children while teaching English at private institutes in Korea, so the moment the list was received all the offenders were banned.
That's similar to today's article, which implies there are foreign men raping Korean children and trying to get back into the country.
The Ministry of Justice said Thursday it will revise immigration rules to ban foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children from re-entering Korea permanently.
I'm wondering how many foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children there are, and how many are trying to get back into the country.
It took all of six sentences for the reporter to bring E-2 visa holders up:
In the inspection, Rep. Lee Joo-young of the ruling Grand National Party urged the ministry to tighten the rule on E-2 visa issuance, arguing it’s so lax that many convicted foreigners attempt to cross borders with legal residential status. The legislator did not disclose the exact number of foreigners caught for the violation.
Go fuck yourself. Many? How many? When you throw around charges like that, you'd damn well better back them up evidence. Unless, of course, there isn't any.
11 comments:
Quoting the Korea Herald, you say that "the rate of sex crime among foreigners is less than that of Koreans ... 'While the nation's average indictment rate for sexual crimes was 45 percent in 2008, the rate for foreigners was 39.7 percent over the past eight years.'"
How is the "rate of sex crime" related to the indictment rate?
You're right, Kyle, I screwed up there and I changed it to reflect it. We read about rumors of foreign teachers behaving inappropriately in class, though even without an indictment that can influence popular opinion.
To deport or not to deport is something to think about after jail time, no? Pedophiles should go to jail first, not to their countries.
Please, read carefully: "foreigners raping Korean children". What does exactly mean the guy who wrote that idiotic phrase?
Sorry, maybe my point about the indictment rate wasn't clear.
What is the relevance of comparing a foreigners-only indictment rate to a Koreans-only indictment rate? It seems the indictment rate is a reflection of the strength of the prosecution's evidence at the beginning of criminal proceedings. Where the evidence is weak, the prosecution likely won't even seek an indictment in the first place.
So I guess I'm not seeing what those rates tell us about how often foreigners and Koreans are committing these kinds of crimes in the first place. It seems to me that some of the other metrics you cite are more appropriate to make the point you're trying to make.
I think it is a good idea for Korea to kick people out who commit crimes. In the U.S. you can't vote if you're a felon (even if you're a citizen). I'm not sure how it all works with foreign felons... But I think we first imprison them and then give them the boot.
Now if they would only do something to PREVENT the behavior in the first place. In my experience Koreans (especially my students) are very seldom apt to behave correctly in an effort to avoid punishment.
As you point out, it's absolutely atrocious how Korea treats its own rapists and paedophiles. The sentences they hand out (or DON'T!!!) are an embarrassment to a nation that has way too many other embarrassments to deal with.
Don't get me wrong. I think that foreign rapists and paedophiles (and as you say, there's obvious a difference that isn't being recognised...) should be punished severely.
But this is just another pathetic example of a media run by Racist Swine who should be castrated for their bigotry and ignorance.
I've been closely following the BNP farce back in Britain and it's an embarrassment to everyone in the country that they even exist. Yet these people (a tiny group) remind me of Korea.
This is an interesting example that adds to the fact of why Korea probably isn't recognised as a "global international brand": because they still hate the foreigners in their own country. In some respects, it looks like Korea sees foreigners living in Korea as a necessary evil; use us to teach them English, cheap labour (non-western foreigners), absorb foreign culture, but hate the fact that we are here doing it all.
It seems so strange that a small, but extremely vocal, minority continues to spew lies about foreigner crime rates, and then convolute Korean crimes to mean that they should be more strict with foreigners.
Until Korea stops trying to blame all of the evils in this country on foreigners, this country will continue to be passed over as a "global leader".
I suspect that this talk of "many" foreign sexual predators is not just racism -- it's classic scapegoating. The powers that be fear outrage from the Korean public over institutionalized light punishment (or no punishment at all) for Korean sex offenders, but they also know that the status quo is slow to change (as it is in any culture). So they take advantage of existing prejudices against foreign men, and start making vague references to foreign sex offenders, so that Koreans will direct their anger outward rather than examining the flaws in their own culture.
We see the same basic principle whenever there's talk of "unqualified" native English teachers; all attention is focused on the foreigners themselves, and any in-depth criticism of the multi-kajillion-dollar hagwon industry that brings those foreigners to Korea in the first place is conveniently brushed aside.
"[B]an foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children[!!!]"
So we've finally gotten to the heart of the message of the Na-Young case: it's all about foreign pedophiles, aka anyone with an E-2 visa. Lovely stuff.
Whatever they spend creating a brand image for Korea, they lose in dog eating, protests, fight club congress, and letting rapists off with a slap on the hand. Koreans want the world to think they are special so much that they even cheat at every sport they compete in internationally (except baseball, kinda hard to cheat at that).
Remember the Blood Rave scene from Blade? Tracy Lords is all sweet and kind to the guy until she gets him into the blood rave. Then she ignores him. The vampires bump the guy and are rude to him. They hate him. They want to suck his blood. Now replace Tracy Lords with Koreans/Korean brand image, the guy with foreigners, and suck his blood with cheat us/suck the life force out of us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD3Yl_lY0ic
By the way, I am 1994.
On a different note: BRIAN...
i failed. it was too late with the damage control. =(
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