Severe Punishment to Sexual Offender

A man in his 30s who sexually harassed a woman in a subway was given an unprecedented prison sentence.

On July 15, Kim Young-gyu, a judge of a single-judge criminal court of the Seoul Southern District Court, sentenced Kim (30), who was booked without detention on a charge of deliberately touching a woman’s body in a subway (infringement of a sexual violation law) to six months in prison and arrested him in the court.

In the ruling, the judge said, “The punishment is severe since the offender committed the sexual crime in a crowded subway and took advantage of the fact that women tend not to report crimes like this due to their feeling of shame. Even though he is a first-time offender, he is given an actual prison sentence because he denies his crime and shows no signs of remorse.”

Until now, sexual offenders in a subway have usually been given a suspension sentence or a fine.

Kim was prosecuted without detention on a charge of sexually harassing a woman, called A (23), by putting his hand under her skirt in a subway on the second line in Seoul on December 28 last year.

Jae-Myoung Lee egija@donga.com