A woman's online petition calling for her father to be given the death penalty for killing her mother has surprised the nation.
Besides the shocking content, controversy is rising over whether it is proper for the Cheong Wa Dae website to allow people to take advantage of the national petition site and suggestion board to gain public attention for personal matters.
The post comes after the murder of a woman by her ex-husband at an apartment complex parking lot in Gangseo-gu, western Seoul, Monday.
The ex-husband, surnamed Kim, stabbed her to death, telling police he had become emotional from the divorce process.
Soon after the murder, the police began searching for Kim after examining CCTV footage recorded near the scene, one of which showed him staggering through. The police confirmed he was hospitalized after drinking and taking several sleeping pills, and detained him there. They asked the prosecution to seek an arrest warrant for him, Wednesday.
The murder gained more attention after the victim's daughter, who is in her late 20s, posted the petition titled "I am the Gangseo-gu apartment victim's daughter" Tuesday night, in which she called for the death penalty for her father who she called a "vicious criminal."
"My mother has been a victim of domestic violence for four years, and after their divorce, she received constant death threats from him," the daughter wrote. "She became anxious with all the threats and was not able to live a normal life and take part in social activities."
The mother and the daughter had to move five times including to protection facilities, but the father was able to find them every time and continued his threats, she added.
The daughter urged for the need to isolate suspects from society to prevent secondary damage, and for the legal system to make an example out of him. The petition garnered more than 80,000 supporters as of Wednesday evening.
"The post was made by the eldest daughter, but we are currently investigating to see if the details are true," an official from the Gangseo Police Station said.
The petition is one of more than 310,000 petitions posted on Cheong Wa Dae's website since the launch of the message board in August 2017 to better communicate with the public.
Cheong Wa Dae makes it a rule to respond to any petitions that garner more than 20,000 signatures within 30 days. Fifty-three petitions have been answered, mostly socially controversial issues such as the abolishment of anti-abortion laws and calls for stronger punishment for drunk driving.
However, criticism has also risen that more people are submitting their personal issues to the website, requesting to resolve individual hardships including "there is too much homework" and "please reduce the stairs, there are too many."
Some people have been calling for the petition site to be shut down or to make the petitioners disclose their real names. But Cheong Wa Dae said it believes the website has more positive effects than negative ones, giving the government the opportunity to listen to the public.
Source: koreatimes.co.kr, October 24, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
