The criminal law of Korea was proclaimed on September 18th 1953 and enforced on October 3rd 1953. This study, after 60 years since the revision of criminal law was made, will examine the progress and contents of enactment and revision of criminal law ...
The criminal law of Korea was proclaimed on September 18th 1953 and enforced on October 3rd 1953. This study, after 60 years since the revision of criminal law was made, will examine the progress and contents of enactment and revision of criminal law revised over 11 times and propose the development challenges to be pursued by the criminal law of Korea. At the time of enactment of the criminal law, although it was enacted during difficult conditions such as extreme confusion after liberation and the Korean War, it has tried to reflect the global legislative trend and overall review of legislation throughout the world, and to be faithful on the ideals of constitutionalism and human rights to be held by the criminal law. Since the enactment, there were a total of 11 criminal law revisions made but unfortunately, although it needed a total revision only a handful of revisions were made and there remains an insufficient aspect to the revisions. In this article, 5 types of development challenges were proposed based on the revision process of criminal law up to now and its contents. That is ① include the multiple criminal special law into the criminal law and establish the status of basic criminal law of all criminal law, ② reconsider the trend of sever penalization having many problems and reasonably readjust the extremely high sentence, ③ improve various problems held by pecuniary punishment system to review the introduction of daily fines, and derive with unified regulations related to forfeiture and collection, ④ reexamine the policy of zero tolerance and hostile attention related to sexual offenses, promote the balanced criminal politic legislation such as rehabilitation through the treatment of offenders, ⑤ and the improvement methods related to patricide having the debate of violation of the equal rights, the abolition of infanticide sin and concurrent offenders based on the particulars of criminal law. At any age and for any criminal law, it is requested that the principles of criminal law such as the principle of legality, protection of human rights and the principle of responsibility should be respected reflecting the conditions obtained at the time, and the effectiveness or functionality required by the criminal law should be maintained. The awareness of law of the citizens, reflection of judicial environment, new criminal provisions and decriminalization work will all be such contents. Therefore, the future criminal law shall reflect the aforementioned challenges in a timely manner and afterwards, it should continually revise and develop the necessary contents. And that can be called the permanent improvement challenge to be bear by the criminal law.