Yonhap defends criminals

GIKorea (ROKDrop) caught this one from Yonhap about how Koreans are receiving "unnecessarily" heavy sentences for crimes committed overseas. GI called into question the Korean systems failure to punish crimes against foreigners in Korea (If you haven't heard about the 10 month sentence for rape, you should), I have to go a different direction on the indignation scale though.

In the United States, more than half of the 197 South Korean inmates were serving prison terms of 10 years or longer....

The punishments are very harsh compared to those in South Korea where those convicted on such charges (ed. as fraud and drug related offences) face maximum sentences of 10 years of imprisonment, he claimed.

Actually, the article does not go into detail about the crimes that were committed by the 197 South Koreans in US prisons. So we really have little information to go on in considering whether the punishment received is fair or not. I guess we just have to take Yonhap's word for it that the punishment received is more severe than here in Korea for the same offense.

If Yonhap really wants to impress upon us the inequity of the punishment given to Korean citizens overseas then perhaps they should publish some statistics that show us that Koreans are somehow being punished more severely than citizens of those countries rather than simply convincing us that Korean courts do not punish crime with due severity. How do the punishments in other countries compare to those doled out in Korea?