A man in his twenties saw a thief ransacking his house. Realizing that the thief could hurt his family members, the man hit the thief with a laundry rack. The thief ended up with brain death. In terms of whose fault was bigger between the man and the thief, the verdict was that the man should be sentenced to jail for one year and six months. He is currently incarcerated for three months. Such an incident not only reflects an unjustifiable judgment but also a loophole in Korea’s legal system.

 

The recent incident announcing that the man should be punished because he made the thief suffer brain death has aroused severe disputes. For many ordinary people, hitting a thief or a robber is a justifiable act when they see the thief in their house. It is for the sake of their selfdefense. On the other hand, people who oppose the trial result assert that it was hard to discern whether the intruder was a thief or not in the first place. Despite which side is right or not, one thing that is true is that the man could not be expected to just stand still when he saw the thief in his house and needed to act for self-defense.
 
In Korea, there are eight criteria that can be considered as self-defense. First, it should be at least some sort of defense behavior. Second, a person should not provoke the counterpart. Third, a person should not exert any violence first. Fourth, a person should not exert violence that is more severe than the attacker. Fifth, a person should not use any weapons or dangerous tools. Sixth, a person should not attack the counterpart when the counterpart stopped the violence. Seventh, the counterpart’s damage taken should be smaller than the individual’s damage taken. Eighth, the counterpart should not have damages that take more than three weeks to get healed.
 
When taking a look at the standards, most of them indicate that a person should not take any provocative actions towards a thief or a robber. What a person basically needs to do is watch and wait what the attacker is doing. However, this is highly unrealistic when a person is in a perilous situation. It is most likely that the person will act immediately when he or she sees a robber in the house. Because of such preposterous legal criteria of self-defense, it seems like the man in his twenties had the judgment of imprisonment.
 
People who agree with the recent judgment believe that the man’s action was closer to an offense rather than self-defense. Before discoursing about whether his action was selfdefense or offense, there needs to be a clear definition and description of those two terms. Since Korea has such mild standards of selfdefense, it seems that many people believe the man’s action was too violent. Korea needs to at least take away the criteria which says the person should not exert violence at first. When someone is defending, it is natural that some sort of violence can be used to protect oneself.
 
It is true that the rights of the thief should be respected. However, the thief himself abandoned his responsibility and thus does not have any rights in the first place by intruding someone else’s house. The thief decided to harm other people by stealing their money or products. For fairer and justifiable legal judgments in the future, Korea needs to amend legal binding standards of self-defense and make a balanced verdict that would not solely punish a person who only physically harmed a thief.
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