Guilty Until Proven Innocent in Korea > 영어토론방

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Legally speaking, a person is innocent until proven guilty.
The legal term, "presumption of innocence" means that no one should be considered guilty until convicted by a court. If accused of a crime, therefore, you have the right to defend yourself to protect your integrity. No one can condemn or punish you as a criminal until you are proven guilty of committing the crime. That is why the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" has been a long-running maxim.

In Korea, however, things are somewhat different.
If you are arrested or indicted, you are already guilty until proven innocent not by the criminal law but by the so-called people’s sentiment law. Once you fall prey to malignant scandals or rumors, there is no way for you to bounce back. Although you may be proven innocent later, the irrevocable damage has been done and you will still be "guilty as rumored" in Korean society. Like a witch trial, the press and the public opinion would continue treating you as if you were already a convicted criminal.

In other countries, competence is the primary factor when choosing someone for a governmental position.
As long as one is truly able and competent, he is appointed a cabinet minister so that he could work for the nation. He may have some flaws, but nobody is perfect. Unless he has broken the law or has previously been convicted of a crime, he will be given a chance. In Korea, however, a candidate for a cabinet minister should be as morally impeccable as a clergyman. Nobody cares about his competence. That is why in the past, incompetent politicians have taken over the nation and eventually ruined the country.

That, of course, does not necessarily imply that those three resigned minister candidates mentioned were truly able and competent. They were simply the president’s men - which much we know. Nevertheless, we had no right to condemn them as if they were guilty as charged. Yet we hastily put them on a summary trial and convicted them by the "people’s sentiment law."

Traditionally, Koreans like to watch games, fights, or staged dramas.
Even street vendors, who sold panacea on the street, always staged a drama first in order to draw people’s attention before attempting to sell their dubious medicine. That tradition still persists and we still enjoy watching sport games, loud skirmishes, and intriguing television and political dramas. To the Korean people, therefore, political scandals are very much like a dramatic show watched for entertainment. We tend to cheer and applaud, while watching people bleed and collapse in the political arena, due to the wounds inflicted by the stones we throw at them. But that is so brutal.

They say that in authoritarian or totalitarian countries, people tend to defy the maxim we need to live by: "innocent until proven guilty." Korea, then, must be either an authoritarian or a totalitarian society, since we Koreans obviously seem to think reversely: "guilty until proven innocent." We continue to indict people and punish them long before they are proven guilty, but what if they are wrongfully accused?

The hurt and damage done to one’s image and integrity is something that cannot be retrieved once ruined. We cannot hastily judge other people and condemn them indiscreetly. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty.

Question
1. Do you have these kind of experience or do you know someone in your surroundings damaged wrongly by
   this tendency of ‘charged = guilty’? (This doesn’t have to be formal case. Talk FREELY.)
2. How do you think of the title of this reference; Guilty until proven innocent in Korea?
   Please share your opinions or impressions freely.
   (You can compare our country with other countries’ cases or whatever you have in meeting.)
3. What is more important to have governmental authority; personal competence, or morality?
4. This unreasonable tendency is at least partially because of mass media’s rash reports which are
    only for gaining larger audience. How can we solve or reduce these problems?

Guilty Until Proven Innocent in Korea
Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the American Studies Association of Korea. - Ed. (http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/)

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