(A Professor of Department of Police Administration, Hansei University)

The DNA Act was enacted on January 25th, 2010 as crime became more violent, intelligent, and serially criminalized; as exemplified from a case of Kang Ho-soon. The use of DNA identification information has been a controversial issue since the enactment of the law. Not so long after the law was enacted, the unconstitutionality of the law was contested in the Constitutional Court in 2011. At the time, the Constitutional Court ruled that the DNA law was constitutional. Recently, however, there was a call for a Constitutional Court of Appeals, which ruled that Article 8 would infringe on the right of appeal because it did not provide the DNA sample subjects a proper procedure to defend themselves, or disagree, after a warrant was issued. Meanwhile, the court ordered its implementation until the legislation came into effect on December 31st, 2019; leading to concerns about legal gaps which could lead to a constitutional inconsistency.
 
           To clarify, the Constitutional Court’s decision in 2018 showed that Article 8 of the DNA Act does not guarantee the institutional procedure to guarantee the opportunity to state a subjective opinion during the issuing of a DNA sampling warrant. Even more, after the issuance, there is no remedial procedure to disobey the warrant or to request the verification of the illegality of the collection. Indeed, this declaration reveals the current DNA Law excessively limits the right of access to courts.
 
           Following the decision of the Constitutional Court, the controversy over the revision of the DNA Act continues in various areas. While the object if the Act seems reasonable, it is expected that it may take considerable time for the law to be amended, because the impact of constitutional discordance adjudication and legislative call is not comparable to that of a decision on simple unconstitutional. Indeed, there are examples in which the law remains unchanged even though constitutional nonconformity and legislative calls have been made.
 
           The unconstitutional purpose of the Constitutional Court is agreeable. This is because, the current DNA Act tends to ignore the need of protections against various problems, like the possibility of human rights violations due to a demand for a quick induction of scientific investigation. However, there are still a lot of things to be improved with establishing a procedure guaranteeing the right to present an opinion and legality of collecting DNA information.
 
           To begin with, the crimes subjected to DNA collection are too broad. It is recommendable to exclude juvenile offenders and non-violent offenses such as: invasion, theft, and prevention of rights violations, which are not considered to be as serious crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape. In addition, there is a requirement to retain the DNA information until the death of the subject, except in special circumstances such as being proved to be innocent. Considering this, an alternative should be established regarding the retention period for the DNA information for types of crime respectively, or to prepare for the deletion of the DNA information after a certain period, with the premise of reviewing the risk of second offense.
 
           Next, it is necessary to consider ways to require that the third party be responsible for collecting and managing the DNA information obtained from the collected samples. Currently, there are two agencies who collect and manage the DNA information in South Korea: The prosecution office and the police. If these investigating agencies can only manage identification while a third party is responsible for encoding and managing pure DNA information, the possibility of leakage and infringement of DNA information could be prevented. Since DNA identification is sensitive and personal information, it is also necessary to examine whether there is any part to be maintained in relation to the current privacy protection law.
 
In conclusion, the Constitutional Court’s decision on constitutional mismatches means we must have both a revision of the current DNA Act and for reasonable institutional improvement. Rather than responding passively to the purpose of the Constitution’s decision, the objectives of the law, the subjects of DNA information collection and the method of managing the collected information should be reconsidered for reasonable institutional improvement.
                                                                                          
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