Korean politicians are pushing for the current policy of giving injections which alter the hormonal levels of young sex offenders in South Korea to be rolled out across the board.
Currently, only offenders whose victim is under 16 are given the treatment, which has supposedly no long term effects after a course of injections, but there are calls for all offenders to receive the same punishment.
Korea Joongang Daily quotes Representative Shin Eui-jin, a Yonsei University professor of psychiatry and member of Saenuri’s task force dealing with sexual crime policies as saying “In cases where experts deem that the sexual drive is difficult to suppress, we are pushing to revise the law to enable chemical castration regardless of the magnitude of the crime.”
Critics say that the treatment, which was legalized in 2010, violates basic human rights but supporters point out that it is also used in countries such as Poland and Russia and in some U.S. states, including California.
