Article 12-1, the Constitution of Korea provides that ‘every citizen is entitled to free from any bodily restriction. Unless required by any statute, there is no justification that anybody may be subject to arrest, restraint, seizure, investigation ...
Article 12-1, the Constitution of Korea provides that ‘every citizen is entitled to free from any bodily restriction. Unless required by any statute, there is no justification that anybody may be subject to arrest, restraint, seizure, investigation or interrogation, and nobody should be sentenced to punishment, security disposition or forced labor without complying with relevant statute and legitimate procedures.’ The said provision requires that statutory criminal action procedures should be followed to achieve ultimate purpose of criminal law.
In addition, Article 12-3, the Constitution of Korea provides that ‘the justification of arrest, restraint, seizure or investigation shall be based on presentation of warrant issued by a competent court as applied by prosecutor according to legitimate procedures. However, if said measures involve an offender in flagrante delicto and if he or she may escape or destroy evidence after committing a major offense punishable with 3 or longer prison term, the prosecution may sue out warrant to arrest him or her after the fact.’ That is, the said provision requires that physical restriction should be justified by warrant issued by the court before the fact, but recognizes an exception that warrant may be sued out after the fact if an offender in flagrante delicto and a case of question are felonious in nature, and he or she may escape and destroy evidence.
However, even the arrest of offenders in flagrante delicto may not be exceptionally free from the principle of arrest by warrant, unless there is certain appropriateness and proportionality justifiable for such warrantless arrest. The Supreme Court of Korea also demands general requirements for warrantless arrest of offenders in flagrante delicto, such as publishable act, red-handed crime, criminal timing and obvious offender/offense. Particularly, it demands the needs of arrest - i.e. concern about potential escape of offender or destruction of criminal evidence - as a part of critical requirements for warrantless arrest.
The purpose of criminal law is to punish offenders for their delict and secure legal benefit and protection of state, society and individual people. Indeed, it is inevitable that implementing the right of punishment even in accordance with regulations in the Criminal Action Law as adjective law may sometimes violate individual basic human right. However, it is important to assure human rights for even a suspected person who faces a charge of certain offense by investigational agency, since he or she still has individual human respect and worth.
The mainstream of contemporary criminal policies has evolved from propagation of liberalist criminal policies, reinforcement of the principle of subsidiarity under criminal law and criminal law for responsibility toward criminal law for the prevention and reinforcement of victim's interests. In such context of evolution, conventional principles of punishment based on free penalty have been gradually replaced with pecuniary penalty or community-based treatment; no matter how much effective any punishment may be in achievement of desired goals, it is not justifiable to inflict punishment on offenders even in violation of their individual basic human rights. Moreover, it is required that state power shall inflict due punishment on offenders to the extent that their criminal acts violate individual subjective right of victim or cause social harm or hazard to a community threatfully. And it is important to consider both purpose and effectiveness of punishment for them.
Both the Road Traffic Law and the Special Law for Traffic Accident Management are typical examples of legislations enacted to prevent and control potential traffic-related offenses or crimes. Particularly, the latter law is a special law enacted ‘not to criminalize traffic offenses’ to certain extent, as traffic offense cases have grown rapidly in parallel with ever-increasing number of motor vehicles, and conventional penal countermeasures for those traffic offenses on the charge of homicide by misadventure have involved a chain of issues such as massive number of ex-convicts. In same context, the Road Traffic Law has also provided a system for penalty notification disposal in pursuit of decriminalizing traffic offenses.
On the other hand, the police in Korea now arrests most of detected drivers under the influence in practice as offenders in flagrante delicto and requires them to file a interrogatory form for suspect to authority, so that they may be immediately released from restriction. Otherwise, it confirms their willing intent to attend police station for interrogation before prompt release of them from restriction. Indeed, driving under the influence (DUI) involves risk of traffic accidents in reality, but the risk is just abstract in nature. Thus, it is not favorable to usually apply the arrest of offenders in flagrante delicto only to DUI as a part of offenses in violation of traffic-related laws, which involve various attributes of administrative penal law. But it is required to carefully consider whether it is necessary to improve such practice of arrest in the interest of human right assurance, so that certain traffic offenders who may destroy evidence or may evade shall be arrested as offenders in flagrante delicto, but other bona fide offenders should not be arrested in flagrante delicto as possible.
This study intends to give an overview about arrest system and DUI, and discuss criminality of DUI on the basis of in-depth research reports on the DUI. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine and critically discuss whether it is appropriate to arrest most of drivers detected under the influence as offenders in flagrante delicto without reasonably judging if they may escape or destroy critical evidence, although such arrest of those drivers detected under the influence in flagrante delicto doesn't violate any law. Ultimately, it seeks to explore possible ways to improve human right of suspect to a little higher status in terms of interrogative procedures.