Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae. Photo Joint Report Group
Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae said on the 1st, “As the Minister of Justice in charge of the correctional affairs, as the Minister of Justice in charge of the correction, I am very sorry for causing concern to the people,” regarding the incident of a new coronavirus infection (Corona 19) collective infection. This is an official apology that came out more than a month after the first corona19 confirmed on November 27 last year.
In an article posted on Facebook this afternoon, Minister Chu said, “Infectious diseases such as corona first break down the most vulnerable parts of our society, and socially, the small and medium-sized self-employed and vulnerable groups suffer more.” “Parts are revealed, but it is the overcrowding of camps that are very fatal in the case of a large-scale infectious disease.”
“The Eastern Detention Center has previously quarantined new prisoners for 14 days and then forced them to comply with the procedure for admittance to marriage, but even if a confirmed person has no symptoms, it was not filtered out, and the possibility of spreading it remained.”
Regarding future countermeasures, Minister Chu said, “We plan to reorganize the eastern detention center as a living treatment facility and then reorganize it into a facility that accepts confirmed patients, and transfer non-confirmed people to other correctional institutions and separate them.”
It also announced that it would lower the prison density in the near future by expanding parole and execution of sentence for exemplary prisoners. In addition, he pointed out that structural problems vulnerable to infectious diseases, such as overcrowding in the eastern detention center and insufficient ventilation facilities, need to be improved in the future.
Minister Chu repeatedly apologized, saying, “As Minister of Justice, I will do my best to prevent the spread of Corona until the end of my term of office,” and “I apologize once again for causing concern.”
Reporter Eunbin Kim [email protected]