Sexual abusers of minors to go on Internet

Offenders of sexual crimes involving minors, including money-for-sex deals with boys or girls 19 years of age or younger will have their names made public on the Internet. The Regulatory Reform Committee Tuesday approved revisions to the enforcement decree of the ¡®Law on Sexual Protection of Youth¡¯. The draft revisions call for the names and personal information of sexual offenders who have been convicted and subjected to a review by the Commission on Youth Protection to be published in the Government Gazette and also be posted on the bulletin boards of the Central Government Building and city-provincial offices for one month. Their bio-data will also be put on the Internet homepage of the Commission on Youth Protection for six months.

The decision is bound to touch off heated controversies between its advocates who believe these steps to be necessary to prevent sex crimes involving youth and its opponents who consider it an infringement upon privacy.

Under the new legal arrangement police, prosecution and court authorities should transmit the lists of those convicted sex offenders to the Commission on Youth Protection twice a year; the commission then reviews the history and quality of crimes committed before picking the finalists subject to publicity that will cover their name, age, occupation, address (up to city, county and ward) and the contents of criminal charges. Those who have been so selected may lodge a complaint within sixty days of public notice. Earlier in July the Regulatory Reform Committee saw fit to limit the period of publishing the identity of criminals to one month on both the central government building bulletin board and the internet homepage of the Commission on Youth Protection. But the CYP and women`s organizations raised doubt about the efficacy of such short-lived publicity, causing the period of bulletin board notice and Internet exposure to be extended in the final draft revisions.

Some lawyers point out the possible unconstitutionality of such a measure making public the identity of sex offenders by allowing indefinite numbers of people to gain access. It may be an act of putting them in double jeopardy that will entail their social ostracism. A Jurisprudential tit-for-tat will follow when the offenders are identified on the Internet about next March.

Boo Hyung-Kwon bookum90@donga.com