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T wo stepmothers who beat their step- daughters to death were convicted in Dae- gu and Ulsan and sentenced to jail time. But critics say their sentences were too le- nient and won’t do enough to crack down on child abuse in Korea. In Daegu District Court, the trial of a 36-year-old stepmother, surnamed Lim, and her husband, surnamed Kim, has concluded. Lim was charged with beating her 8-year-old stepdaughter so hard at their home in Chilgok County, North Gyeongsang Province, that her intestine ruptured and she died. Lim also was charged with forcing the girl’s 12-year-old sister to say she was responsible for her sister’s injuries. Lim was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatally beating her stepdaughter, and Kim was sentenced to three years in prison for the abuse of his daughter. But the sentences were much lighter than those requested by the prosecution: 20 years for Lim and seven years for Kim. The guideline by the Supreme Court’s Sen- tencing Commission for someone convicted of inflicting a fatal injury is a jail sentence of three to five years. If there are mitigating cir- cumstances, the guideline is two to four years. If there is an aggravating factor, the prison term may increase up to seven years, and if there is more than one aggravating factor, the term can go up to 10 and a half years. In Lim’s case, her sentence was increased to 10 years, the court said, because the victim was her own stepdaughter and she tried to conceal her crime by forcing her other step- daughter to take the blame. When the judge read out the sentence, the sisters’ aunt, who raised them before they moved in with their father and stepmother in September 2012, cried, screamed and eventu- ally fainted. She had to be carried out of the courtroom. “We expected the penalties would be heavier than the prosecutors’ demand, but the panel of judges seems to have followed the guide- line of the Supreme Court,” Lee Myung-suk, president of the Korean Women Lawyers As- sociation, said after the ruling. “The charge of subordination of perjury must be added in the appellate trial because the stepmother tried to conceal her wrongdoings by making the victim’s sister perjure herself.” In Ulsan District Court, the trial of another cruel stepmother, surnamed Park, has also concluded. The court sentenced her to 15 years in prison for beating her 8-year-old stepdaughter so hard that 16 of her 24 ribs were broken. Some of them pierced her lungs and she died. A 15-year sentence is longer than the Su- preme Court guideline, but the court credited the extreme cruelty of the crime. Prosecutors had demanded a death sentence on a charge of murder, but the court convicted her of causing bodily injury resulting in death. In legal terms, the panel of judges did not ad- mit dolus eventualis, which means the defend- ant was aware of the consequences of his or her actions. According to a report by the National Child Protection Agency, 97 children died from abuse between 2001 and 2012, but experts say that number is an understatement. Med- ical institutions are not required to report all cases of children dying from physical abuse to the NCPA. At the end of last year, a special law on child abuse was passed by the National Assembly that should help authorities take child abuse more seriously. When the law is enforced, the police may take away children who are be- lieved to have been abused from their parents. Moreover, if a child is being exposed to seri- ous or repeated abuse, prosecutors must file a claim to strip the parents of their parental rights. “Officials must intervene more actively be- cause initial responses are critical in child abuse cases,” said Kim Sang-yong, a professor at Chung-Ang University’s Law School. Meanwhile, the prosecutors of the cases in Daegu and Ulsan said they were not satisfied with the sentences, and will appeal them. “We accused (the suspect) of murder and don’t accept the judges’ verdict of bodily inju- ry resulting in death,” said Lee Gi-seok, a pros- ecutor in the Ulsan District Prosecutors’ Office. “We will try to prove it as a murder case.” M any ignore rules for food waste collection. Last September, Kim Si-jung, a 56-year- old resident of Myeonmok-dong, Seoul, held a stakeout in front of his house to determine who had been dumping food waste on his front porch. After three days of sitting and waiting in his car, he finally caught the culprit, which turned out to be his neighbor of 10 years. “He said he didn’t want to spend money buy- ing regulation garbage bags to dispose of his food waste,” Kim said. “Now we aren’t as close as we used to be.” The revised “volume rate food waste collec- tion system,” implemented by the Ministry of Environment, went into effect last June. The idea behind it is that people with more waste should be responsible for paying more, and special food-waste garbage bags must be pur- chased. But in an attempt to save 10,000 won ($9.61) to 20,000 won a month, many people have re- sorted to dumping their leftover food illegally in front of their neighbors’ houses. In Myeonmok-dong, around Kim’s residence, piles of blue and black garbage bags were filled to the brim near telephone poles or by the walls of houses every 20 to 30 meters (65 to 98 feet). Even though they weren’t regulation garbage bags for food waste, they were still packed with moldy fruit and discarded fish or chicken bones. The flower garden near the community also stank and was full of trash. “We made the flower garden to stop people from illegally throwing away (their compost), but it didn’t work out at all,” said Son Tae-yeo- ng, another one of Kim’s neighbors. “We re- cently asked the borough office to have CCTV cameras installed to prevent those crimes.” Banners and announcements all over town warn of a 1 million won penalty for illegally throwing away trash, but those threats have been to no avail. In the months since the disposal system be- gan, the amount of daily food waste in Seoul has gone down from 3,311 tons in 2012, to 3,070 tons in 2013. However, illegal food dis- posal still remains a problem. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Govern- ment, approximately 14,000 people suspected of illegally dumping their refuse were appre- hended last year out of a total of 48,000 cas- es in Seoul. They were fined 150 million won total. Others have found more creative ways of throwing out their refuse, going so far as to stuff it down their toilets or sinks. Park, a 47-year-old resident in an apartment complex in Sadang-dong, Dongjak District, Seoul, complained to her building’s manage- ment after a stain appeared on her ceiling, fol- lowed by a severe stench. The odor reportedly resulted from her up- stairs neighbor dumping food waste into the sink. People living in apartments typically follow a different food disposal policy, using collec- tion boxes dedicated for food waste. Even though they don’t need to buy their own reg- ulation garbage bags, each family must pay their part of the total disposal cost, which is equally divided by the number of the house- holds. The drawback, however, is that no mat- ter how much waste one household accumu- lates, everyone is charged the same. “Old couples like us don’t generate much food waste,” said a 73-year-old woman surnamed Kim, who lives with her husband in the apart- ment building. “It’s not fair for us to pay the same commission as other households.” mANy iGNorE rulEs for fooD wAsTE collEcTioN wicKED sTEpmoThErs JAilED, buT NoT for vEry loNG 31