17-year-old sentenced for infanticide amid record of isolation

The Hankyoreh reports on a tragic case where a 17-year-old girl was sentenced for abandoning her newborn. While the court acknowledged her extreme isolation and lack of support, it still imposed a prison sentence, highlighting the difficult balance between acknowledging mitigating circumstances and upholding maternal responsibility.

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She was in a situation where she couldn't even inform her family about her pregnancy and couldn't get help from her boyfriend.

This case, and others like it analyzed by the Hankyoreh, reveal a disturbing pattern: young women, often victims of abuse or facing severe economic hardship, are left utterly alone to deal with unwanted pregnancies. The legal system's response, while acknowledging their plight, still results in punishment, underscoring a societal failure to provide adequate support systems.

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Despite being a minor, the defendant had a duty as a mother to provide care and protection, but she failed to take even the minimum measures for the victim child, leading to its death.

The article points to the "birth registration system" and "protected birth system" as recent government measures, yet notes their low uptake and reduced budget. This suggests a disconnect between policy intentions and on-the-ground realities. From a South Korean perspective, the emphasis is on the societal structures that lead to such tragedies. We must ask: who is truly abandoning whom when the system fails to catch these vulnerable individuals?

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We need to establish fundamental measures to break the social isolation of 'crisis pregnant women,' which is pointed out as a structural cause of the tragedy of infant murder and abandonment crimes, not just dismiss it as individual deviation.

The narrative here is not just about individual failure, but a collective one. The Hankyoreh believes that focusing solely on the individual's actions ignores the systemic issues of social isolation, lack of reproductive healthcare access, and inadequate support for crisis pregnancies. The legal outcomes, while perhaps necessary from a punitive standpoint, do not address the root causes that push these young women to such desperate measures.

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It is time for our society to reflect on who is abandoning whom.