Talk:Human rights in South Korea

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[edit] References

References need huge clean up for citing sources --sin-man 09:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

I edited the Criminal justice system section for the following reasons:

"Many South Koreans consider the police force to be corrupt or incompetent": that's a very sweeping generalization that could be said of any country in the world. Is there a citation to this? Is this true in 2006? Is the percentage higher than in most other countries? Portrayal in a movie is not really a proper reference for this type of a claim in an encyclopedia article. Neither is a joke about a bear and a mouse. This is just silly.

"In the nation's prison's there ..." That's just redundant, because the sentence continues to quantify "prisoners of conscience." Of course prisoners of conscience are prisoners, and they are in the nation's prisons. What else would they be, and where else would they be?

The right to a jury is not provided in virtually all the countries of the world. The jury system is a feature of the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, not a basic component of human rights.

Least injured person is held responsible? That's just preposterous. Is there a citation?

In pretty much all countries with a functioning criminal justice system, many crime charges will be dropped if the victim and offender reach a settlement for minor crimes. This is routine in the U.S.

Dollarfifty 07:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

1. Many if not most South Koreans don't trust the police; they are considered incompetent and easily bribed. I will look for something citable but it will be difficult to find in English. The movie and the joke are obiously not meant as citations but as illustrations of public sentiment. An encyclopedia need not be dry and lifeless to be authoritative, and the reader interested in this subject would surely be interested in learning about them.

2. The least injured person is, indeed, held responsible. You're right that it's preposterous but, to be frank, if you knew much about the justice system here you wouldn't be questioning it. It does need a citation though. And I don't believe that the 'blood money' system is routine in the US. The payment system here is unofficial but so common that you could practically print up a price list for various crimes -- and not just minor ones, either. Vehicular manslaughter, for example.--ThreeAnswers 00:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Many if not most Americans don't trust the police either. I'm sure many sources say the same for many if not most countries. To make a meaningful statement, we need international comparative studies of corruption and incompetence. I'm not saying it's not true, I'm just saying that's a sentence that could belong to just about any country article, and not helpful to the reader.

I can assure you that the monetary settlement for criminal offenses is very routine in the U.S., and I imagine most countries. It's only logical, if you think about it. If the victim reaches a mutually agreeable settlement with the perpetrator, the prosecutor will not only lose the motivation, but also the crucial cooperative witness testimony. As a practical matter, in many cases, if the victim doesn't ask that the charges be pursued and fully cooperates, there's not likely to be a prosecution.

Again, if there's some comparative study out there, please add to the article. But the previous unsupported claims just seemed unencyclopedic. Appleby 03:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)