음란물 또는 포르노그래피 소고

Abstract

The definition of obscenity by the Korean Supreme Court is moralistic in

the sense that the criminal sanction is to be taken if by the moral standards of

society a material as a whole is judged to appeal to the prurient interest by

containing detailed and offensive sexual depiction and description. The value of

freedom of expression is partially considered in the definition and accordingly a

number of literature and artistic expressions have been punished as obscene.

Recently the Korean Constitutional Court applied a new liberal standard,

limiting the scope of punishable obscenity to the sexual expressions that destroy

human dignity, and emphasized on the role of the mechanism of ideas'

competition before punishing obscene materials. However, this new standards has

not been practically accepted by law enforcement authorities and lower courts.

On the other hand, the radical feminist anti-pornography arguments by Andrea

Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon to some extent influenced Korean

feminists. It is worth listening to the feminist voices; they wonder in defining

obscenity why prurience counts but powerlessness does not, and why sensibilities

should be protected from offense better than women from exploitation;

importantly they argue, pornography, sexualizing the male dominance, causes

harm, and the law should change to recognize and alleviate that harm.

However, it needs to take a caution against the interpretive problems inherent

in the radical feminist censorship regime. The vague concepts in the radical

feminist anti-pornography ordinance such as sexual objects, filthy or

inferior, domination, exploitation, and so forth, inevitably give a wide

discretion to the law enforcement authority, resulting in infringement upon the...