KSIS: In horror, is there hope?
While a child is abandoned by the justice system, people come together to support her.
A carefree eight-year-old girl, KIM NAYOUNG – alias to preserve the identity of the victim – led a very quiet life, living in the peaceful town of Ansan with her school friends. Innocent, and working hard in her classes to make her parents proud, it was on December 11, 2008 that her life changed, and forever. Be careful, the rest of the article may offend sensitivity, be warned.
On the way to school, young NAYOUNG is accosted by a man in his fifties, with a slovenly appearance, from whom a strong, alcoholic smell emanates from between his lips. Both finding themselves near a church, the man named CHO DOO SOON decides to call out to the child to encourage him to go and pray with him. Not knowing the adult facing her, NAYOUNG refuses, claiming that she has to go to school, but CHO doesn’t care and decides to drag her into the toilets of the place of worship. There, he will abuse the poor girl for hours. First, the man tried to insert his penis into the child’s mouth, but she bit him, he responded with violent blows in order to plunge her into unconsciousness. Subsequently, he raped her numerous times, without his misdeeds being noticed by anyone.
The rape continued, with CHO inserting himself into every possible orifice, including the ears, then trying to strangle her to end her life. NAYOUNG clinging to life, he plunged his head several times into the toilet to drown it, again, without success. Preferring to leave her for dead, and in order to erase the traces of his DNA in the little girl’s body, he grabbed a garden hose, and inserted it into her vagina and anus, as well as an outlet toilet, and by removing the tube, NAYOUNG’s intestines came out with it. Panicked, the man tried to put the intestine back in place through the child’s anus, and then made her sit down so that it would not come out again. He then ends up fleeing, leaving her unconscious, not without having raped her again.
NAYOUNG drew on her last resources, she escaped from the church toilets, until a passerby found her and called for help. Transferred to a hospital, the damage to his child’s body was such that it was necessary to remove her intestines, insert a stoma, and reconstruct an artificial anus. In addition, 80% of her reproductive organs having been destroyed, she will never be able to give birth once she becomes an adult. Despite the precautions taken by CHO to clean the crime scene and the child’s body, three prints were found and he was immediately arrested at his home. When the press learned of the crime, it was with horror that all of Korea discovered the sad battle waged by NAYOUNG to survive.
The people’s astonishment only increased when we discovered that CHO was not unknown to the police. In fact, the man was arrested and imprisoned several times. Born in 1952, he dropped out of school when he was only in middle school, and was arrested for stealing a bicycle, then for extorting money from a street vendor, who made him spend a year and a half in a juvenile detention center. Upon his release, he spent eight months in prison for shoplifting, and his crimes then took a more dramatic turn when he was sentenced to three years’ probation for the rape of a 19-year-old girl in 1983, and two years in prison for the murder of an elderly person who had expressed political opinions different from his own. His defense was to plead insanity, and he spent these two years in a psychiatric hospital. In total, CHO received 18 forms of convictions and fines before attacking poor NAYOUNG.
Repeat offender, the prosecutor asks for life imprisonment, the death penalty being suspended, but on appeal, the rapist received only twelve years in prison, because there are two laws in Korea, the Joo Chi Gam Hyung and Sim Sin Mi Yak law, which says that a person cannot be responsible for a crime if mentally and/or physically the person is impaired, with the interference of a consciousness-altering substance such as alcohol or drugs being a mitigating circumstance. As a result, CHO was considered not to be in full possession of his means, and therefore not able to risk life in prison despite the horrors he inflicted on the little girl. NAYOUNG will live the rest of her life with a level 3 disability.
During interrogations and taking statements, the police were also singled out for their inability to record the testimony of the child, who had to do it multiple times. The police forced her to make her confession sitting down, which caused her severe pain, knowing that she had to be hospitalized for a total of eight months. Traumatized, she, who could no longer formulate the slightest word for weeks following her attack, communicated a lot through drawings, but was forced to attend the trial where CHO formally refuted the accusations of assault despite the unequivocal evidence. In particular, he says;
“I’ve lived a complicated life relying on alcohol, but I’m not the type of scum who would rape an eight-year-old” – CHO DOO SOON
This criminal case relaunched the debate on mitigating circumstances linked to the consumption of drugs or alcohol, where in France for example it is an aggravating circumstance. CHO continued to claim he had no memory of the attack, and if NAYOUNG had not nodded when asked if the man smelled of alcohol, the man would likely have received a life sentence. CHO‘s wife has always remained by his side, supporting him, and describing him as a kind man who deserves yet another chance, given his numerous convictions in the past. But with the people winning this case, the Special Act on Sexual Violence was amended in 2013, five years after the events, in order to ban sentence reductions in cases of drunkenness or drug use. Additionally, in 2019, the Cho Doo Soon Act was enacted to provide exclusive 24/7 monitoring of sex criminals once released from prison.
Also in 2013, a film heavily inspired by this affair was released in theaters, called Hope (Wish/소원). It tells the events from the point of view of NAYOUNG‘s father mainly, who was always very present and invested in defending his daughter. He sued in particular the police who carried out the interrogations and the confessions for the additional trauma that NAYOUNG had in having to recount the rapes again and again, and three years later won for his daughter the trial which resulted in him receiving 13 million dollars in compensation. In 2017, a petition to the government collected more than 615,000 signatures against CHO‘s release and for him to be retried. However, it is impossible for an individual to be retried for the same crime in Korea, so in order for CHO to return to prison, he will have to commit a crime again.
It was therefore on December 13, 2020 that the criminal was released from prison, still being sentenced to wearing an electronic bracelet for seven years, and having to be monitored 24/7. The MBC channel then revealed his photo for the first time on TV, a Korean procedure which says that the people have the right to know the identity of serious criminals when they leave prison. The man deciding to return to live with his wife, he then found himself a few steps from a primary school, and especially from NAYOUNG‘s family who decided to move quickly to no longer be in contact with their daughter’s rapist. As for CHO’s wife, she declared during an interview for Yonhap News;
« He never unleashed his anger and he was recognized as a polite person » — CHO DOO SOON‘s wife
Dozens of people protested his release from prison with signs outside the prison demanding that he be chemically castrated, and Ansan residents also said they lived in fear now that CHO was released. The then 68-year-old man had to be escorted by the police who also set up a barricade system, because the residents of Ansan threw eggs at him, climbed on cars to try to reach him, and when asked him if he regretted his actions, he remained silent, and only bowed twice. The city installed 15 new CCTVs, 30 additional street lights and a guard post was set up in front of his wife’s house. 150 YouTubers also went to his house to monitor his actions, and some even tried to poison him with gas canisters, in vain.
However, it seems that the people won their case in one way or another, as did NAYOUNG, because recently, CHO was sentenced to another year behind bars for not having respected his curfew for 40 minutes. Although this will not atone for what he did to the little girl who today dreams of becoming a doctor, knowing that this monster will be imprisoned for another year gives some hope to the population.
Journalist: Pillet Anaïs
Translator: Anaïs
Sources: KSTATION TV, see under pictures
