On February 5th, elementary students messed up an apartment at Daegu by destroying their neighbors’ delivery boxes while throwing a tantrum. On January 22nd, a middle school student strangled an elderly and knocked her to the floor in a light rail in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province, that spread through Social Network Service, which caused a public outrage. In another video that spread on the same day, a middle school student was verbally abusing a senior citizen and using violence on subway line 1 in the Seoul metropolitan area. All of the above perpetrators were under 14 years of age and were not subjected to criminal law. Therefore, they will not get criminal punishment. In fact, young criminals are committing serious crimes including not only physical assaults, but sexual crimes, and driving without a license. According to the Supreme Court data, the number of young offenders received by the Ministry of Youth increased from 7,030 in 2016 to 9,102 in 2019. As such, the number of young offenders causing public resentment in society is increasing, and this article will point out the cause of this.

First, weak punishment for young offenders is a problem. The Young Offenders Act is a law that grants a special status to people under the age of 14. The act is not to punish people under the age of 14, but instead to use methods of correction. As a result, young offenders are not subject to criminal punishment and are subject to protective measures. This is because Korea follows the United Nations (UN) convention on the right of the child which keeps children from harsh punishments. The problem is that young offenders are exploiting this. In March of 2020, eight middle school students committed a hit-and-run accident while driving a stolen rental car in Seoul. However, they did not get any criminal punishment. After the incident, they showed no remorse at all using Social Network Service (SNS) activities. However, in the United States (U.S.), most states have no age limit on the age of punishment for young offenders. Under the law, depending on the severity of the crime, people aged 14 can be prosecuted equally as adults. As a result, the U.S. can sentence young offenders to life imprisonment without parole, and 2,600 young offenders are currently serving life sentences.

Second, unhealthy media is adversely affecting teenagers. According to a survey conducted by the Korea Institute for Health Promotion and Development, 65% of teenagers said they had seen liquor advertisements, images, and drinking scenes on terrestrial TV. Media usually glorifies drinking and teenagers are easily influenced by this media. As a result, the teenager’s drinking rate has risen from 12.5% in 2016 to 13% in 2019. Also, since the advent of the era of one-person Internet broadcasting, harmful programs are increasing. According to the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCC), the number of single-person broadcasts subject to deliberation due to gambling or pornography increased from 286 in 2017 to 537 in 2019. However, according to the KCC’s inspection to a large private broadcasting company, only 1.5 employees are deliberating 60,000 hours of personal broadcasting per day. Choi Young-Mook (Prof. of Department of Media, Sungkonghoe University) said, “The fact that the media has a great influence on children and adolescents is supported by long-standing research in journalism. There has been much discussion in the media era in the past, and as a result, media education was institutionalized in many countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia.”

Among these situations, there is a wind of revision over the Young Offenders Act. According to a survey conducted by Realmeter, a polling agency in 2019, eight out of ten respondents agreed that the Young Offenders Act should be revised. However, in 2020, the Blue House responded in a national petition triggered by the hit-and-run death by the youths in the rental car, saying that it was difficult to reduce the  punishment age of youths since Korea is following the UN rule. Nevertheless, attempts to revise the Act continue. On February 2nd, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea's National Assembly proposed a bill to lower the age of the youth to 12 years. Representative Jeon Yong-Ki said, "The growth of teenagers is as fast as the pace of social change, so middle school students clearly know whether it is a crime or not and they should be held responsible for their actions."

Noh Yun-Ho (Lawyer, Representation of April law firm) said, “Since the Criminal Act was enacted in 1953, the age of criminal offenders must be 14 years or older to be punished. It has been continuing without any changes. However, the time has passed a lot. Now, considering they are more physically and mentally matured compared to the youths of the past, I agree that the minimum age of the act should be lowered.”