The purposes of this study were to compare the actual situations, legal system's development process and research trends of child abuse in Korea and Japan, and to provide future policy proposals to Korea. This study was based... [ view full abstract ]
The purposes of this study were to compare the actual situations, legal system's development process and research trends of child abuse in Korea and Japan, and to provide future policy proposals to Korea.
This study was based on qualitative analysis on literature. We searched for the terms including ‘abuse at home', ‘abuse by biological parents’ and ‘child abuse prevention act’. 716 graduate/doctoral studies and articles were found from National Assembly Library of Korea, and 1,241 studies were extracted from National Diet Library (473 studies) in Korea and Rainbow Children Center (768 studies) in Japan. These were analyzed with six analytical criteria developed by Seo Woo-gyung (2001).
The results of this study were as follows:
The number of child abuse at home has been rising in both countries last ten years (2004-2014). Especially, assailants of child abuse were mainly their biological parents in South Korea (77.2%) and Japan (86.9%), rather than stepparents, foster parents, grand parents, or uncles. Also, the number of abuse by biological father (45.2%) was higher than biological mother in Korea, whereas the abuse by biological mother (52.4%) was higher than their biological father.
Second, the Child Abuse Protection Act was first enacted in 1961 in Korea, 1933 in Japan. Although the Act has been revised constantly, the frequency of child abuse at home has not been reduced.
Third, the studies that have been conducted since 1990s, have not interested in the need for strong legal action against abusive parents. The reason why the legal system approach has not been active in both countries is that it gives priority to the bypass method to overcome through parent education.
This study could be used as basic material to reduce child abuse at home and to find realistic alternatives.
