| Reuters |
By Jung Min-ho
More than 220,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the government and the National Assembly to toughen the law against false accusations of sex crimes.
As of Thursday, 220,450 people have signed the petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website. The person who posted the plea on May 25 said Korea needs a law that punishes those who take advantage of its faulty justice system with heavier penalties.
“False accusations destroy the lives of the accused and their families. Nevertheless, accusers rarely face legal consequences, and when they do, they get off lightly,” the person said.
The call came after YouTube star Yang Ye-won's controversial claims that she was forced to model for pornographic pictures at a Seoul photo studio in 2015. After it was revealed that she asked the accused photographer to give her more photo opportunities, which she did not mention during her YouTube “confession,” many people have doubted her claims and expressed fear of false allegations.
According to the Ministry of Justice's investigation guidelines, prosecutors and police cannot initiate investigations into alleged false accusations of sex crimes until they conclude that the accused is evidently innocent.
Some people think the guidelines violate the Constitution, which guarantees equal legal rights for everyone, and gives an unfair advantage to accusers. Since a petition to scrap the guidelines was posted on May 28, it has garnered more than 120,000 signatures.
In March, Kang Ha-jung, the widow of a public middle school teacher who killed himself last year amid a sexual harassment investigation, also demanded better legal protection for the accused. She claimed a student made false accusations against her husband after he scolded her for using a mobile phone in a classroom.
Kang posted a plea that called on President Moon Jae-in to set up a system to better protect people like her husband, saying: “This country has no sense of justice for falsely accused men.”
But some experts reckon false accusations are rare and more protection for the accused only helps real sex criminals escape justice.
Cheong Wa Dae is mandated to answer petitions that collect more than 200,000 signatures within a month.