SENSITIVE CONTENT The "KimSooHyun Prevention Act" Petition

[RussianRoulette]

Trigger warning: Sensitive Topics​

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You guys might have seen this floating around online already, but a National Assembly Electronic Petition began on March 31st to raise the legal qualifications for statutory rape against minors in South Korea.

As of right now, In South Korea minors are defined as anyone under 18 though current statutory rape charges only protect children ages 13-16 and the prison sentence for the crime is only 2 years. With this petition that is being presented, the people wish to expand the age limit to 13-19 and wish to expand the prison sentence to at the very least a minimum of 5 years.

The petition needed 50,000 signatures to be submitted to the assembly for review and as of today the signature has over 51,000 signatures so it is currently in the process of being presented to the necessary committees.

To my understanding from the source article, the next step for this petition is for this next committee to review whether or not it meets qualifications to be passed on to the next step. They have 90 days to do so, and after that if it passes it gets passed on to a Plenary Session.

Here is a statement from the person who started the petition:
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Recently, the grooming sex crime committed by Hallyu star Kim Soo-hyun against child actress Kim Sae-ron, who was a minor at the time, was revealed, angering the entire nation. However, it is unfortunate that the statutory rape of a minor only protects children between the ages of 13 and 16, so Kim Soo-hyun cannot be legally punished in reality.
South Korean law clearly defines minors as those under 18 years of age and protects them, but the age limit for statutory rape, which only protects minors between the ages of 13 and 16, has enabled pedophiles to evade the law. In order to prevent something like this from happening again in the future, we are petitioning to revise the statutory rape of a minor law as follows under the name of the ‘Kim Soo-hyun Prevention Act.’”​

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