Lee orders measures to isolate child sex offenders

SEOUL, Oct. 5 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak on Monday instructed the
government to take measures to separate child sex offenders from the rest of
society by heightening public disclosure of their identities.

Presiding over a meeting of his senior secretaries, Lee said that the people have
the right to know if their children are exposed to the danger of a sexual assault
in their own neighborhood, as sex offenders have a very high rate of recidivism.
The call follows a public outcry over the Supreme Court's ruling handing down a
12-year jail term for a man convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl, who lost
her genitals, anus and part of her intestines in the attack. The parliament has
already begun discussion on toughening punishments for perpetrators of rape and
other brutal crimes by revising the current criminal law, which limits the length
of imprisonment to 15 years.
"The people need to know if a person ever convicted of sexual assault against
children is in their neighborhood, and if this person moves to a different
neighborhood, the people in that neighborhood need to know," the president was
quoted as saying during the meeting.
"As child sex offenders have a high tendency of repeating the crime, we need to
isolate them as much as possible from society by increasing the level of
disclosure of their identities," Lee was also quoted as saying.
bdk@yna.co.kr
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