청소년정책과 국가의무 = Child Protection Policy and State - With Some Critical Analysis of the 'Child' Discourses in Legal System

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Since l8th century, 'child' has been classified as contrasting to the matured on the basis of its age, and conceptualized as a group of human being that needs protection and discipline. The discourse of child protection was set up with this conception, which had its basis on the orientation of 'blocking child from the adult world'. With development of domestic life, this policy stressed the role of family in protecting child, significant part of which was shared by public school based on modem national education system. Love and strict discipline made by the adults and on the criteria from their perspectives, was main tools for protecting child.
Present korean system of child protection is not significantly different from those 'modem' one, with an exception that it shares bits of contemporary world-wide trends of the collapse of family system as so-called bulwark of child protection, which has made it inevitable that the burden of that protection shall move from home to state. The Korean Constitution has responded to these trends with such words as "people under age"(§32⑤), "welfare of juveniles"(§34④), "maternity"(§36②), and "children under protection"(§3l②). But these all sets the conception of 'Child' only as 'prematured person', or 'person who needs protection of the matured'. Though, in 1991, Korean government has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there are hardly found any statutes which significantly set up and guarantee the child's 'due' standing to ordinary life community. Even the Constitutional Court regards child as object of adult's protection rather that subject to actively choose its own style of everyday life: the Court said only what the child shall not do, rather than what the adults shall do for child to express and satisfy its desires and personality.
Such approaches are found in most of child protection legislation. This paper makes special analysis on the age with which the legal concepts of child are defined. There are so many statutes on child protection and child welfare, and each of them has its own criteria on age ranging from thirteen to twenty four, which seem somewhat arbitrary without any reasonable justification. The fact that no governmental agency/organization has responsibility on systematic and concentrated planning of child protection and child welfare, poses another problem: each has its own policy, and no one has legal power and responsibility to reconcile and rearrange them into a comprehensive scheme. The Commission on Youth Protection in Prime Minister's Office may take those tasks with some conditional prerequisites.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 문제의 제기
• Ⅱ. 보호 v. 배제: 청소년보호의 법담론 비판
• Ⅲ. 청소년보호와 국가의무
• Ⅳ. 대안-결론을 대신하여