무의미한 연명치료중단의 형사법적 검토

The Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Medical Treatmen-with Regards to the Case of Korea Supreme Court

1. In Korea, since there have been no legislations or legal guidance about discontinuing life-supporting treatment, recent Supreme Court s decision which I deal with in this article has a significant value as this is the first decision to recognizes the withdrawal of life-prolonging measures to the incompetent and pronounce the legal grounds and the requirements of judicial approval. 2. Supreme Court holds as follows;a. Firstly, patients have the right to self-determination which is originated from human dignity and pursuit of happiness. They can previously decide discontinuance of life-sustaining treatment if they are in the condition when there is a degree of medical certainty that there can be no recovery and death is very imminent. This holding says this condition as “the stage of unrecoverable death.”b. Secondly, if patients apparently express their message to withdraw these kinds of medical treatment in the form of ‘living will’ under the informed consent, this expression legally regards them as using the right to self-determination. In addition, even if patients did not have an expression whether they withdraw the treatment, judges can assess whether they are in the stage of unrecoverable death and they can be approved of forgoing life-supporting treatment under the considerable hypothetical circumstances. 3. I point out several arguments in this article. a. To begin with, the decision in this case has some ambiguous and abstract criteria that make judges not easy to assess the recognition of withdrawal in specific cases. This point can make a dangerous consequence how courts depend upon not will of patients will, but attitude and mind of parents or guardians. Therefore I think that this theory which states in this case should more carefully apply the similar cases. b. In addition, I argue that courts should grant the claimant the power of authorizing the discontinuance of extraordinary means of sustaining the vital processes on the condition of observation of due process to make the least possibility of misdiagnose or misjudgment. c. Also I assure that the claim which petitions the discontinuance of sustaining means should be only accepted when the case has an achievement of the proper balance between individual respect as a right and human dignity as constraint, the interest of each party such as patient, parent or guidance, doctor, state or society.