201613092 Choi Hyunjeong
Recently in Korea, the incidence of brutal crime becomes higher. Even in the recent news, you could easily find several serious crimes like torture or murder of children have happened.
Besides, there are some creepy news of brutal criminals like Jo, Du-sun, who will be released from the jails in a couple of years. Hearing these news through media, I thought about criminals’ punishment and their human rights. Now Korea is the abolition of capital punishment Country, since 1988 abolished capital punishment. Well, if brutal criminals are imprisoned in many years, does that really affect to crime prevention or retribution? That kind of thinking went through my mind, and I thought abolishing the death penalty could ignore the essence of punishment and it is against equity of law. I argue that the death penalty is needed to brutal criminals like serial killers.
There are some reasons why the death penalty should be maintained. First, just because of the existence of death penalty, potential criminals may be less likely to commit crimes. Every person has survival instinct, that is fear about death. So the decreasing of crime rate is natural. For an inverse example, in Korea, after the abolishment of the death penalty, the percentage of murder crime increased 32%.
Second is for the people’s feeling. The percentage of ‘maintenance of death penalty’ is increasing in Korea as years go by. In 2012, 70% of Korean people agree with maintenance of death penalty according to the poll. If the kind of people’s thinking is ignored, legal consciousness of people can be confused.