Jang Yun-gi, convicted of kidnapping and murdering a high school girl, is escorted to Gwangju District Court in Dong-gu, Gwangju, on Saturday for his first-instance sentencing. [Newsis]
Jang Yun-gi, convicted of kidnapping and murdering a high school girl, is escorted to Gwangju District Court in Dong-gu, Gwangju, on Saturday for his first-instance sentencing. [Newsis]

The Gwangju District Prosecution Office has appealed the first-instance ruling that sentenced Jang Yun-gi, 24, to life in prison on charges including the kidnapping, attempted rape and murder of a high school girl.

According to legal sources, the Gwangju District Prosecution Office on Saturday filed an appeal with the 13th Criminal Division of Gwangju District Court, presided over by Judge Lee Jeong-ho, citing an unjust sentence in the Jang case.

The first-instance court had sentenced Jang — indicted on charges of rape-murder and other offenses under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes — to life imprisonment and ordered him to wear an electronic ankle bracelet for 30 years.

"Jang must be permanently isolated from society, but South Korea is effectively an abolitionist state on capital punishment, and there is no absolute life sentence without parole to bridge the gap between the death penalty and life imprisonment," the court said in its ruling. "We make clear in this judgment that the only way to offer even a measure of comfort to the victim and her bereaved family is to ensure that life imprisonment is carried out in full, with parole never permitted for as long as the defendant lives."

The court added that "the purpose of the life sentence is to permanently remove the defendant from society and compel him to repent in the suffering of incarceration," and that "no leniency whatsoever has been extended at the sentencing stage."

Jang was indicted on charges of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl, identified only by her surname Lee, on a street in Wolge-dong, Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju, at around 12:10 a.m. on May 5, and killing her after attempting to rape her.

At the time, Jang also attacked a male second-year high school student who ran to the scene after hearing screams. He also faces separate charges of raping and stalking a Vietnamese woman.


husn7@heraldcorp.com