hankyoreh

The Busan Nambu Police Station. (provided by the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency)

Suppose a woman is in the car with a man she met randomly when he moves in for a kiss. If she bites off part of his tongue, is she guilty of a crime? South Korean police have decided that she wouldn’t be guilty, provided that the man kissed her by force.

Sources at the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency told the Hankyoreh on Nov. 3 that a woman surnamed Lee went drinking with friends in the Seomyeon neighborhood of Busan on July 18. At 8:30 the following morning, Lee was sitting on the street in Seomyeon, in the city’s Busanjin District, when she was approached by a man surnamed Ahn.

Ahn then drove Lee toward a hiking trail on Mt. Hwangryeong, in Busan’s Yeonje District. At 9:30 am, Ahn kissed Lee in his car. As she resisted him, she bit his tongue, severing about three centimeters from the end.

Ahn immediately drove to the Gwangnam police station nearby and filed a criminal complaint against Lee for the injury. Ahn told the police that she’d accepted his offer to go for a drive and that she’d also agreed to kiss him in the car.

But Lee said she was defending herself when Ahn tried to force himself on her and filed a complaint of her own against Ahn for injuring her in the course of rape.

“When we checked the car’s data recorder and security camera footage, we confirmed that Ahn had committed an indecent act involving the use of force,” the police said on Nov. 3.

The police handed the case to the prosecutors with the recommendation that they indict Ahn, but not Lee. The police’s view is that Lee shouldn’t be prosecuted for severing part of Ahn’s tongue while resisting him.

While the police said that Lee’s act exceeded the normal bounds of self-defense, she could still be exempted from prosecution under Article 21, Clause 3, of South Korea’s criminal code. The code says that, even “when a preventive act has exceeded normal limits [. . .] an act performed through fear, surprise, excitement, or confusion in the night or under other extraordinary circumstances shall not be punishable.”

“We reached that conclusion after holding a meeting of the self-defense review board and canvassing the opinions of attorneys and other outside experts,” a police spokesperson said.

By Kim Yeong-dong, Busan correspondent

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