북한이탈주민의 범죄피해 및 범죄발생관련 법지식 평가와 법교육의 개선방안

Abstract

As a whole, it is said that the residents escaping from North Korea or North Korean refugees have trouble adjusting to South Korean society such as suffering criminal damages or committing illegal activities themselves, not only because of different legal systems and cultures between South and North Koreas but also of their ignorance of laws in South Korea. To identify these problems, this survey tries to evaluate the legal knowledge of North Korean refugees in checking the details of the legal knowledge on the crime damage and crime offence among North Korean refugees and analyzing the differences with South Korean in general. In addition, it tries to suggest how to improve legal education of North Korean refugees to enhance the understanding of their legal knowledge. In terms of survey, North Korean defectors who are over 19 and have stayed in South Korea were found to have a markedly low understanding compared to their South Korean counterparts. When it comes to Legal Consciousness related to criminal damage and crime occurrence, North Korean refugees showed the lowest-level consciousness of common sense regarding laws in the field of criminal judicature, and a huge gap in levels of understanding assault, bodily injury (including sexual assault), and domestic violence compared to South Koreans surveyed. In terms of fraud and narcotic crimes, however, over half of the North Korean refugees surveyed showed no different levels of consciousness compared with their South Korean counterparts. This survey has an implication that legal education should be provided to North Korean refugees in the form of regional settlement education for social adaptation.