Today's Editorial  - Debate on Abolition of Death Penalty

A total of 155 National Assemblymen from both the ruling and opposition parties have submitted a bill to abolish the death penalty in Korea, amid a sustained dispute over whether capital punishment should exist.

 The proposal of the lawmakers is significant and attracts keen interest from the general public since the signers of the ``Special Law on the Abolition of Death Penalty'' represent a majority of the 273-seat Assembly.

 They said in the prospectus for the envisioned legislation that, in light of human dignity and the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution, it is a contradiction to take the life of a criminal in the name of justice. They also stated that the death penalty fundamentally denies the possibility of reform, improvement and the return of the criminal to society.

 Local supporters of the elimination of capital punishment were greatly encouraged last week when Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan visited death row inmates at the Seoul Detention Center and asked them not to give up hope until the very last moment. ``All the people in the world commit sins and innocent people may be in the prison, while guilty ones are free,'' he maintained.

 The issue of abolishing the death penalty is not new at all. Various human rights, religious and social organizations, including Amnesty International, have been calling for the elimination of what they claim is a inhumane system of punishment, and vehement debates are taking place in the countries where it exists.

 It is still vivid in our memory that the decades-long dispute over the death penalty was rekindled by the June 11 execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, convicted of committing the April 19, 1995 attack in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and wounded hundreds more.

 The ultimate punishment has been revoked in 108 countries, while it is still used in 87 others. Last June, parliamentary speakers from 21 European, Asian and Latin American nations announced an international crusade for the abolition of capital punishment, calling for suspension of executions in countries where it is still legal.

 The ambitious campaigns to end the death penalty apparently testify to an international trend for its abolition.

 Capital punishment has also given rise to a serious diplomatic row between Seoul and Beijing recently, after the Chinese authorities executed a Korean drug trafficker without giving previous notification to our government.

 According to Amnesty International, a total of 3,058 people were sentenced to death in 65 countries last year, and 1,457 of them were executed in at least 28 countries, with China taking the lives of more than 1,000, followed by Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

In Korea, 89 persons were put to death from 1990 through 1997, but since 1998, there have been no executions.

 Supporters of capital punishment insist it gives satisfaction and closure to the families of murder victims, and by taking an eye for an eye - the killer is killed - it is the most appropriate punishment for convicted killers.

 Their logic is simple: No one has to be executed. If there are no murders, no one is put to death, so murderers cannot be considered innocent people fighting for their lives.

 They claim that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment, and furthermore that it is logically impossible to be cruel while punishing a convicted murderer of an innocent victim. They also advocate that it is a deterrent against violent crime.

 A local lawyer supporting the death sentence revealed that the State of New York had a decrease in horrific offenses since it reinstated the death sentence, and claimed it is premature to abolish the death sentence because we are continuing to experience shocking crimes.

 However, opponents argue that the death penalty is unfair because innocent people are sometimes executed and because it is applied differently from country to country, besides being inhumane in nature. They are also skeptical whether capital punishment deters murder, noting that murder cases in Canada dropped by 50 percent after it eliminated the system.

 Now is not the first time for a bill against the death penalty to be proposed in Korea. In 1995, a group of lawmakers forwarded a bill to that effect, but it was scrapped, while the Constitutional Court ruled against an appeal filed by a civic organization in November 1996 and reaffirmed that capital punishment is constitutional.

 In a 7-2 ruling in favor of the death penalty, the court described the punishment as a necessary evil, but added that it should only be applied to very exceptional cases, and whether to abolish it or not should be discussed again some time in the future due to changes of the times. The Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional Court's ruling in October last year, confirming the death sentence for the leader of an organized crime ring.

 The National Assembly is expected to engage in a hot debate over the proposed bill, although the majority of its members, accounting for 55 percent of the total, have already signed it.

 To be brought up for discussion and voting in the plenary session, the bill must pass through the Legislation-Judiciary Committee, but only five members of the 15-member panel support the initiative. The chairman and two assistant chairmen have made clear their opposition.

 Over the past five years since the Constitutional Court found the death penalty to be constitutional, Korean society has underwent numerous changes, and it is true that there is increasing support for the abolition of capital punishment.

 Yet, first of all, we have to seriously consider whether our society is mature enough to consider the human rights of those who commit serious crimes. The Assembly should determine the prevailing opinion among citizens before it embarks on deliberations on the bill.