해양환경 관련 형법규정 연구

A Study on Criminal Law Regulations concerning Marine Environment

  The national law on the prevention of marine pollution has heavy punitive clauses on the illegal act of discharge from the ships and marine facilities. However the punitive clause seems to be discriminated according to who the pollutant actor is. That is, the punishments varies from 1 year or 10 million won to 5 year or 50 million won in accordance with whether the illegal actor is ship"s crew or marine facility"s personnel; this difference is considered unreasonable clause to impose 5 times punishment for the same illegal act affected to the environment. On the contrary the regulations of the Japan and United States on marine pollution prevention have same punishment for the illegal actor whoever it is. Considering the benefit and protection of the criminal law on the environment is environment itself and the principle of the equity of the law, it is reasonable to impose a graded punishment in proportion with whether it is intentional or not and the scale of the pollution damage, rather than the illegal actor.