In July of last year, a woman in her 40s tried to make an extreme choice by killing her elementary school daughter, but she failed due to the child’s resistance.

In January of this year, a woman in her 20s threw her three-day-old son into a lake in Goseong, Gangwon Province, in sub-zero weather because he was hesrex-boyfriend's child. Fortunately, the child’s life was saved by passersby.

They were both arrested on charges of child abuse and attempted murder, but released after receiving suspended sentences. The Ministry of Justice is pushing to revise the Child Abuse Punishment Act to prevent such cases.

The current law stipulates that those convicted of child abuse or the murder of a child should be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for more than seven years, but in the case of attempted child abuse and murder, there were no related regulations, making it difficult to punish the women appropriately.

Instead, the prosecutor applied a charge of attempted murder, which lead to a suspended sentence in the case of commutation. The Ministry of Justice plans to establish an "Attempted Child Abuse Murder Crime" so that suspended sentences cannot be given even if the sentence is commuted.

The Ministry of Justice explains that if the attempted punishment clause is newly established, even if the sentence is reduced to half of seven years in prison for child abuse and murder, it will be more than three and a half years with a suspended sentence of more than three years.

In addition, the revision also includes regulations that allow children separated from their families to be handed over not only to shelters but also to relatives.

L.L.F reporter Seo-yeong Lee