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photo source, News1
Yang, who died, applied to the school for ‘one month in Jeju’, but did not attend school even after the period was over.
On the 29th, Jo Yuna (10) was found dead with her parents in the waters off Wando, Jeollanam-do, 29 days after her disappearance.
As a result of the first autopsy of the Cho Yang family on the 30th, the police could not reveal the exact cause of death. There were no signs of trauma or disease, he added, adding that drowning cannot be ruled out.
Investigations are underway to reveal the exact cause and circumstances of the death, but as the possibility of parents making extreme choices with their children is raised, voices calling for the prevention of ‘extreme choices after killing children’ are growing.
As a result of analyzing media reports from 2000 to October 2019 by the Korea Criminal Policy Research Institute, there were a total of 426 cases of suicide or attempted suicide after killing a family member. Of these, more than half of the victims included children in 247 cases.
There are no accurate statistics on ‘extreme choice after child murder’, often called ‘parent-child companion suicide’. This is because, in most cases, the perpetrator dies and ends with ‘no right to prosecute’ and is not counted in crime statistics.
Child protection and social welfare organizations are also contemplating whether to include the case in child abuse. Experts expect the reality to be much higher than the known cases.
Kang Mi-jeong, the head of the Save the Children’s child rights policy team, told the BBC, “Until now, there has been no case in which the government has come up with a countermeasure after a case of extreme choice after the murder of a child was reported in the media.” As research continues, I hope that the government will also take measures to include this in child abuse.”
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Korea ratified in 1991, declares that ‘every child has an inherent right to life, and the government of the State party must guarantee the survival and development of the child as much as possible’.
photo source, News1
Judge Park Ju-young of the Ulsan District Court emphasized in the ruling that “accompanying suicide is the language of the offender’s parents.”
‘It’s not a companion suicide, it’s an obvious murder’
There are also cases in which parents fail to take their own life after murdering their children, and are handed over to trial and convicted on murder and attempted murder charges.
In 2020, Ulsan District Court’s 11th Criminal Division (Chief Judge Park Joo-young) tried to make extreme choices after murdering a child due to financial difficulties and burden of child rearing, but admitted to the murder charges of the two surviving defendants and sentenced them to four years in prison each.
At the time, the ruling said, ‘We cannot hear the testimony of the murdered child. Companion suicide is the language of the perpetrators. In the language of a child, this is murder. “Even in the language of the law, this is an outright murder.”
Earlier this year, the 4th Criminal Division of the Changwon District Court (Chief Judge Jang Yu-jin) sentenced the defendant to 7 years in prison for killing his son while suffering from debt pressure.
It is also argued that the criminal law should be revised so that crimes against lineal descendants such as daughters and sons should be punished in the same way as crimes against lineal ascendants such as grandparents and parents.
Article 250 (2) of the Criminal Act stipulates that a person who murders a lineal ascendant of the person or his/her spouse shall be punished by death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment with labor for not less than 7 years. It is higher than the standard murder sentence (up to 5 years in prison).
Team leader Kang said, “(In contrast to killing an ancestor), child killing is classified as general murder, and infant murder has a lower maximum sentence than general murder. “he said.
‘Children are not raised by their parents alone.‘
Experts argued that the government should detect crisis assumptions early and actively intervene based on systematic investigations.
Team leader Kang said, “I think the most important thing is for the government to define ‘extreme choice after killing a child’ as child abuse.”
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, a total of 43 children died as a result of abuse in 2020. The statistics included cases of ‘Child Abuse Abuse’, ‘Child Murder’, and ‘Suicide after the murder of a child’ collected by the National Police Agency, as well as cases recognized through the media.
Save the Children, an international non-profit organization for the rights of children, announced in a 2020 statement that the government will include ‘suicide after killing a child’ in the main statistics of child abuse and take measures to prevent incidents in advance, such as finding families in crisis in advance. urged to establish. Earlier, I sent a letter of opinion to prevent the media from using the term ‘accompanying suicide’ any longer.
Jeong Jae-hoon, a professor of social welfare at Seoul Women’s University, said, “It is difficult to be caught on the radar network if you are not a low-income person or a family receiving the National Basic Living Security (the government’s crisis household). It should be decided on the basis of the problem, not the issue.”
He then argued that schools can be an effective focal point. He said, “We can think of ways to detect problems early by strengthening systems such as school social work, and then transfer them to related institutions such as mental health welfare centers.”
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