Law Office Vincent Nam Yunho Attorney
Similarity Between Smoking Area Murder Case and Crime Facts
The victim's side has demanded the disclosure of personal information of the perpetrator who killed a neighboring resident with a Japanese sword in an apartment in Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul.
On the 14th, Nam Eon-ho, a lawyer from Vincent Law Office, stated in a press release, "Since the 'Serious Crime Personal Information Disclosure Act' came into effect in January this year, we still do not know specifically how brutal the means of the crime must be or what constitutes serious damage," adding, "There is an inherent risk that whether information is disclosed may vary depending on which investigative agency reviews a similar case, and this cannot be free from criticism."
He continued, "It is not unreasonable to imagine, albeit humorously, that if the investigative agencies for the 'Japanese sword murder case' and the 'smoking area murder case' had been swapped, the outcomes might have been different."
The smoking area murder case refers to an incident in August at a smoking area of an apartment in Jungnang-gu, Seoul, where Choi Seong-woo (28), who was delusional that harm was being done to himself and his mother, brutally murdered a neighboring resident who came out to smoke by punching him and repeatedly smashing his head into a flower bed. The prosecution held a personal information disclosure review committee on September 10, the month following the incident, and decided to disclose Choi Seong-woo's personal information.
Lawyer Nam argued, "The current Serious Crime Personal Information Disclosure Act targets cases where the charges are changed to specific serious crimes (such as murder) during the trial process for disclosure of personal information, but restricts cases that have already been investigated as specific serious crimes from the investigation stage from being subject to disclosure even if prosecution is initiated," adding, "This unjustifiably discriminates between the two without reasonable grounds, resulting in unfair outcomes."
He also urged the imposition of the maximum legal penalty on the perpetrator of the Japanese sword murder case. Lawyer Nam appealed, "Although the death penalty officially exists in the Republic of Korea, it has not been carried out for 26 years since 1997," and said, "Legal justice commensurate with heinous murder crimes can only be realized through the death penalty, which also aligns with the public’s sense of justice. We hope that the court will impose the death penalty, the maximum legal sentence as prescribed by the Constitution and laws."
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