マンガやアニメが児童ポルノとして取り締まられている韓国の危機的状況について、高麗大学の朴景信教授が論文にまとめています。
朴教授から、この論文について広報の要請があったので、拡散をいたします。
現在、韓国では、性描写のある日本のアニメ作品等を翻訳した容疑で、60人以上の翻訳家に対して家宅捜索や尋問が行われたとのことです。
これらのマンガやアニメの翻訳は、「児童ポルノ製造罪」として処罰の対象となっており、有罪になれば「5年以上」の懲役が科せられ、刑期終了後も監視や就業制限がつくなど、社会的には死刑にも等しい重罰が待ち受けています。
朴教授たちオープンネットは、この児童青少年性保護法の対象から、仮想児童を外すよう、司法・立法に働きかけを行っています。
地方裁判所及び控訴裁判所レベルでは、このような規定が憲法違反に当たるのではないかとの判断がなされており、今後の憲法裁判所の判断が注目されています。
朴教授から、この論文について広報の要請があったので、拡散をいたします。
現在、韓国では、性描写のある日本のアニメ作品等を翻訳した容疑で、60人以上の翻訳家に対して家宅捜索や尋問が行われたとのことです。
これらのマンガやアニメの翻訳は、「児童ポルノ製造罪」として処罰の対象となっており、有罪になれば「5年以上」の懲役が科せられ、刑期終了後も監視や就業制限がつくなど、社会的には死刑にも等しい重罰が待ち受けています。
朴教授たちオープンネットは、この児童青少年性保護法の対象から、仮想児童を外すよう、司法・立法に働きかけを行っています。
地方裁判所及び控訴裁判所レベルでは、このような規定が憲法違反に当たるのではないかとの判断がなされており、今後の憲法裁判所の判断が注目されています。
TheWorld of ‘Minority Report’ Lived in South Korea
Kyung Sin Park
Director, Open Net
Professor, Korea University Law Professor
kyungsinpark@korea.ac.kr
In 2012, there were 2,224 child sex crime investigations
conducted by the police, an about 22 times increase from the previous year in
Korea.[1](Korean) What was more shocking, a
sizable number of them were women. What
happened?
A year ago, in 2011, in the wake of a
series of several highly publicized cases of child rape-and-murders, the
National Assembly revised the child pornography law to cover the material
featuring “creations or persons who can be perceived as minors” in sexual
intercourse or poses.[2](Korean) Much Japanese pornographic material consumed
in Korea features adult actors/actresses or animation characters, who are featured
as minors either in the stories, or as it turned out, only in the eyes of the
police. 2,224 people, mostly in their
early 20s, were rounded up and investigated as “child sex offenders” under the
Children and Minors’ Sex Protection Act.
Many of them were actually indicted as such and received guilty verdicts,
which will be followed by 20 years of residence registration and 10 years of
employment restrictions, just like those offenders who coaxed real children into having sex in front
of the cameras but definitely unlike the distributors of ordinary obscene
material in which animation characters or live adult characters “look above
19.”
Child pornography law aims to prevent the
visual recording of a minor having or simulating a sexual act with the penalty
of criminal punishment. The idea is that
whether the minor wanted to do it or not, creating or leaving such record
causes irrecoverable damage on the minor’s psyche. Soon, it was extended to include a minor who
did not appear before the recorder’s camera but whose facial photograph was
morphed into the bodies having sexual intercourse.[3] The minor suffers the psychological and
reputation damage all the same when such material is distributed to
others. Finally, it is not just
photographs that cause such damage: Even
drawings and paintings, if realistic enough to be “identifiable” with a real
child, can cause the same damage to that identifiable child.[4] So the U.S. law was designed to specifically include
such material.[5] Now, one should be careful: although there is
much literature speaking of punishing “virtual child pornography”, it many
times means these works which “virtually” make reference to real children who stand to suffer
psychological damages from the production/distribution of those works from
which they can be identified, e.g., the image of a non-existent child created
by morphing a child’s face to an adult’s body in coitus.[6] Virtual child pornography many times only
mean virtual sexual images of real children, not sexual images of virtual
children! Therefore, for instance, Germany
punishes pornography portraying a child’s sexual act up to 3 years or 5 years
in prison depending on the age of the featured minor but only when that child
is a real person.[7]
Now, U.K. went further than that to create
a new law chapter called “images of children” which a pornographic image
focusing on an imaginary child’s genitals or depicting any penetrating sex or any
masturbation up to 3 years in prison.[8]
However, these laws are not child pornography regulations: they can be viewed as obscenity regulations
for they do not aim to punish the victimization of children taking place during
the production of the child pornography, which is punished by other provisions
that are much harsher, i.e., up to 10 years in prison.[9]
Therefore, none of the relevant
provisions in UK applies to the work featuring imaginary children the same provision
applicable to the work featuring real children.
Korean law does, and is probably the only
country in the world that does so explicitly.
The very provision requiring MINIMUM 5 years for producing child
pornography with real children and punishing distribution of such work up to 3
years and/or a fine applies also to the work featuring sexual acts of “creations
or persons who can be perceived as minors”.
Therefore, all the enhanced punishment for child pornography using real
children, child rapes, child molestations, etc., such as 10 years of employment
limitation and 20 years of registering of their names with the local police
apply also equally to the work not involving a real child.[10](Korean) Also, Korea does not adopt a unitary code
system but has a discrete set of laws, one of which is the Child and Minor’s
Sex Protection Act. Being investigated,
charged or convicted under the law of such name has a serious stigmatizing
effect, which an English “Images of Children” offender will not suffer. The law
treats an imaginary sex with an imaginary, non-existent child the same as sex
with a real child. An cartoonist who
authors a work and has a child protagonist in it engage in sex and a person who
videorecords a real child’s sexual act equally face a MINIMUM 5-year sentence:
Is this fair or constitutional?
The U.S. Supreme Court already spoke on the
issue in Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition, that punishing a non-obscene
imaginary child character’s sexual acts violates the Constitution.[11] DOJ argued that it should be punished as
child pornography because it generates an environment conducive to sex crimes
against children. The Supreme Court,
however, found that such work is not proven to cause the viewers to commit
sexual crimes against children, and therefore that, as long as it is not
obscene, punishing such work on the basis of mere conjecture of harm violates a
clear and present danger doctrine and freedom of speech. The implication is that, if such work had
been obscene, it should be punished as obscenity, not as a sex crime against a
child.
The Optional Protocol to the UN Children’s
Rights Convention also limits its condemnation of child pornography to those
works relating to a real child.[12] The EU Framework Decision also goes only as
far as punishing morphing of real children’s image for its definition of ‘virtual
child pornography’ is thus limited. Of
course, under both documents, drawings and paintings will be also covered as
long as they are realistic enough to point to a real child.
The unique Korean law has created
interesting results. One lawyer in the
trial for animation characters argued in court: “So, if the law punishes a
material for its imaginary sexual character’s age, how will we measure the age
of, say, personified animals, extra-terresterials, or for that matter vampires
whose average age in the stories seem to exceed 100 years?” A judge hearing the argument changed the
count from child pornography to obscenity, which by the way carries only 1 year
imprisonment at most. In other words,
even if we were to accept the law punishing harms on virtual children, the law
will be very difficult to apply for it is difficult to measure a virtual child’s
age. Also, the police officers are
spending a lot more time in front of computers than behind scumbags because
they can find the uploaders of porno files much more easily than track down the
ones making pornos with real children.
But, having done so, some of the people behind the IP addresses turned
out to be women! Female pornographers
are hard to come by and if at all should not be that many. The police’s line of questioning for such
female suspect typically goes like this:
“Okay. You volunteered to take
the charge to protect your brother?”
On a more somber note, the new law ended up
putting a lot of young people into the criminal procedure: most of the 2,224
people were caught uploading (actually downloading in the form of a torrent
file into a Shared Folder) Japanese adult videos featuring adult actors in
juvenile’s “costume play”, e.g., wearing school uniforms. Many young people caught fresh into or out of
college cry their hearts out facing the prospect of the hiring/registration
hell for 10-20 years. Where uploading
pirated animations to earn money from the web hard service providers is a past
time unfortunately popular among poor youths, the story goes, the law supposed
to protect youths ended up suffocating many youths’ future hopes. The law sometimes put out of employment young
people who already have jobs: the law put at risk of criminal prosecution the animation
production outsourced from Japan and literally wiped out that industry. One female child rape victim cried on
television recently: “In my experience, pornos don’t make people commit child
rapes. People natured and nurtured to do
so will do so regardless. Stop web-surfing and get out there catch the real
criminals.” True, the same provision
being used against the works showing real children and virtual children, the
police officers greedy for their promotion points will take their patrolling
time out for cyber-patrolling, actually reducing the police work on real
abuses.
“Enough is enough.” In May 2013, a judge Byun Min—Sun filed a
long request for constitutional review of the CMSPA. In June, a judge in higher court acquitted a “school-uniform”
adult video of a CMSPA charge. In
addition to judges requesting the indictments to replace a CMSPA charge with an
obscenity charge, many prosecutors are closing their cases on “deferral of
indictment”, which actually means that the person is permanently protected from
prosecution unless he or she comes back to the prosecutors’ office on another
crime.
I abhor Japanese animation showing children being raped, explicitly down to their body parts. I think people crowding out the cyber-space open to all with such material should be punished, but for what? Obscenity, not child pornography. Why is the difference so important? Not just because the punishments are wildly different but because it is the bright line holding up the bastion of freedom of speech: a clear and present danger doctrine or a speech-act dichotomy. The Japanese anime only imagining something should not be punished for actually committing that something. Movies showing too much drugs and murders may be regulated to protect the sensibilities of the citizenry and possibly to strengthen their vigil against drugs and killings but should never be punished for actually committing drug-trafficking or murders. If we let fantasies be punished here as if the fantasies were actually realized, there will be no stopping. All visual imaginations, for instance, by environmentalists of exploding a whale-hunting ship, by anti-war demonstrators of ammunition cargoes intercepted, will be next targets of jingoistic choke-hold on people’s imaginations.
[5] 18 U.S. Section 2256(8)
[6] See definition of ‘virtual child pornography’ in Council Framework
decision 2004/68/JHA, 22 December 2003,
[7] http://legislationline.org/documents/section/criminal-codes
Criminal Code of the Federal Republic, Section 184b (victim’s age below 14
years), 184c (victim’s age between 14 and 18 years)
[8] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/25/part/2/chapter/2
Coroners and Justice Act of 2009
[9] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1978/37/body
Protection of Children Act of 1978 punishes child pornography made of a real
child of less than 16 years old up to 10 years of imprisonment.
[11] Ashcroft
v. Free
Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002)
[12] For avoidance of doubt, see page 5 of 2005 Europol Public
Information “Child Pornography: Legislation within the European Union” http://www.internationalresourcecentre.org/en_X2/Documents/LegislationEuropol_2005.pdf