환경형법에서의 고의와 과실

A Study on the Deliberation and Negligence of Environmental Criminal Law

The modern materialistic civilization has yielded various environmental problems in the process of its highly intense development since the onset of the near-modern times. Provided environmental contamination keeps its pace as now, anticipated catastrophic consequences will surely come true in terms of the wholesome destruction of our ecology, disrupted equilibrium in the composition of air, sharply rising cost of countermeasures against environmental pollution, serious menaces to life and body, etc. Pollution-related crimes, however, have not ceased increasing as businessmen have been too eager to pursue their own interests showing total disregard for such seriousness, by turning a deaf ear to destructing natural environment relentlessly. Pleasant and comfortable living conditions are essential for individual as well as society as a whole to save vital energy, that actively and live a dignified life. This is why it is badly required Koreans enhance their concern for environmental issues by stipulating punishment against basic environment-related crimes in the Criminal Law Act. The purpose of the present study is to review various issues raised in the process of meeting legal requirements for the prevention of environmental crimes that do particularly serious harm to legal rights among others by unmasking and punishing them accordingly and suggest proper measures to tackle them. In fact, it is hard to deal with all sorts of crimes connected with the environment in this short essay since the provisions concerning environment in the Criminal Law Act are extremely wide-ranged. Environmental pollution has become so serious now as to threaten the very survival of human beings. Its dangerous impact on the public safety is even inclined to intensify day by day. Since human existence depends absolutely on the natural environment, deteriorating environment should no more be neglected but immediate measures should be taken to protect it including but not limited to severe punishment against any destructive acts on environment. In spite of government's keen supervision on the illegal discharge of pollutants, environmental crimes continue to increase and natural pollution keeps getting more and more serious, which might primarily be attributed to inconsistent and halfway control of the government and lukewarm punishment by the law-enforcing agencies. Since inconsequent legal provisions also are found to be responsible to the great extent for such consequences, intensive application of the special law governing control of environmental crimes is seriously requested as the law itself was enacted with an aim to intensify the punishment against such acts. In this context, it is demanded to rectify the imperfect provisions of the concerned laws; such as expansion of range of careless offenses, maintenance of provisions to punish would-be criminals in preparation for denial of one's faults or intention, and extension of application of the special law governing punishment of environmental crimes to violations like noise, vibration, sunshine barrier, subsidence of ground, etc.