Korea may be more 'lenient' toward child-killers than parent-killers: report

Recent court rulings gave far heavier punishments to those who killed their ascendants than to those who killed their descendants

Police officers on Monday in Incheon search the home of a man accused of murdering his son. (Yonhap)

South Korean courts tend to give lighter sentences to those who killed their offspring than those who killed their parents or grandparents, an analysis of court data by a local media outlet indicated on Sunday.

Yonhap News Agency said it analyzed court rulings involving 85 individuals convicted of related charges from 2022 to January of this year, finding that those who killed their ascendants -- individuals directly above them in the family tree, such as parents or grandparents -- were sentenced to an average of 15.7 years in prison. In contrast, those who killed their descendants, such as children or grandchildren, received an average of 7.7 years.

The Criminal Act's Article 250 stipulates that those convicted of murder must be punished with at least five years in prison and permits the death penalty. The second clause of the act states that those who killed an ascendant can also receive capital punishment, but the minimum is seven years in prison.

No separate legal clause exists for the killing of a descendant.

The Yonhap report showed that all of the 53 people convicted of killing an ascendant received a prison term, half of them jailed for at least 15 years, while two were given life sentences.

In comparison, four of the 32 convicted of murdering a descendant were given suspended sentences, while a majority of those charged (22 or 68.8 percent) were jailed for three to nine years.

An overwhelming majority of the victims in the descendant murder cases, 23 people, or 79.3 percent, were minors. But only one person was sentenced to life in prison -- a man convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife and two teenage sons for "looking down on him."

No sympathy for murdered children?

Few countries apply different charges for the murder of relatives, and it is extremely rare for the law to treat the murder of a parent and that of a child differently. In Italy, murder of a family member can be regarded as "aggravated homicide," but that distinction is not applied solely to ascendents or descendants as it is in Korea.

Official statistics compiled by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office have categories for murders of ascendants, death resulting from child abuse, and infanticide, but not a category for the killing of one's own children or grandchildren.

As legal experts have noted over the years, many countries hand out aggravated punishments for the murder of minors. An academic journal article published in 2022 by the Justice Development Foundation found that 26 of the 50 US states issue harsher punishments for the murder of minors.

Not only does South Korean law have no legal category for such cases, some cases suggest that courts do not impose aggravated punishments on parents for the murder of young children. A mother who killed her 12-year-old son and severely injured her nine-year-old daughter was jailed for seven years by the Daejeon District Court last year because she was "deeply remorseful and would likely live the rest of her life in guilt and regret."

The Yonhap report noted that the "guilt" of the defendant was mentioned in 16 rulings related to the killing of descendants, suggesting the courts were relatively sympathetic toward those who killed their offspring.

But most of the rulings on murders of ascendants mentioned the phrases "anti-social (38 times)," "humanity (33 times)" and "deprivation of humanity (12 times)."

Just a week ago, a 62-year-old man killed his 34-year-old son over what he claimed was a lack of financial support, although the bereaved family denied this claim and said both the victim and the suspect's long-divorced wife had given him money. The man is currently under investigation, but he will be charged in court with ordinary murder, as no separate legal clause on killing one's own offspring exists in Korea.

There is an ongoing debate about the murder of children, with some saying it should be added to the Criminal Act as a crime separate from murder while others say the provision regarding the murder of an ascendant should be removed. Multiple attempts to legislate punishment for the murder of one's children were made in the previous National Assembly, all of which were discarded or have yet to be deliberated.