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In a Cabinet-party meeting Thursday, the Grand National Party and the government decided to establish a “gene bank” in which collected genetic information on violent criminals will be stored, and to publicly reveal the names and faces of criminals in cases of brutal crimes like murder and robbery. Attention is also focusing on whether there will be a change in the government’s attitude after the GNP communicated to the government Thursday that “the people view enforcement of the death penalty as necessary.”

A group consisting of the GNP’s First Policy Coordinator Chang Yoon-seok and Vice Policy Coordinator Park Min-sik, Vice Minister of Justice Lee Kwi-nam, First Vice Minister of Public Administration and Security Jung Chang-sub, and National Police Agency Deputy Commissioner General Lee Gil-beom held a working-level Cabinet-party discussion at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building on Thursday morning and agreed upon these measures.

In a briefing following the meeting, Chang said, “Because many citizens are feeling uneasy recently due to the serial murder incident, there is a need for special countermeasures.”

The party and Cabinet also made plans for special measures so that the perpetrators of brutal crimes cannot be paroled after 10 years. Under the current law, such criminals are sentenced to indefinite terms of incarceration and can be examined for parole after 10 years in prison. They also took initial steps toward raising the maximum definite term of incarceration from the current 15 years to between 25 and 50 years.

The party and Cabinet made the decision to establish a gene bank for violent criminals, in which genetic data would be collected during the investigation and sentence execution phases and its information shared by investigative organizations. The party and Cabinet plan to establish a committee to manage the gene bank under the Office of the Prime Minister.

“I communicated to the government that there is high level of public opinion that the death penalty must be enforced,” Chang said, adding that the government’s response was that they knew such opinion existed and would refer to that fact in their operations. But there was no agreement or conclusion on whether to enforce the death penalty, Chang noted.

The Republic of Korea currently has a total of 58 death row prisoners for whom death sentences have not been carried out, including 56 Koreans and two foreigners.

In response, a representative of the Catholic Human Rights Committee said, “The prevention of violent crimes is not a problem solved through the execution of violent laws.” If enforcement of the death penalty and the establishment of a gene bank are carried out, it will represent “a major step backward for the human rights policy that South Korea has been improving all this time,” the representative said.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]