화학물질관리법상 화학사고 처벌관련 주요 쟁점

Abstract

Recently, chemical accidents, large and small, have caused damage in our country, adding to people's anxiety. As a result, the Act on Control of Chemicals was enacted in January 2015 because the previous Act on Control of Hazardous Chemicals had limitations in responding to chemical accidents, etc. Accordingly, the Chemicals Control Act provides an obligation to report chemical accidents immediately, and prepares for chemical accidents by introducing a new regulation that punishes human casualties from chemical accidents. However, the definition of ‘Chemical Accident’ is somewhat comprehensive as the emphasis was placed on the aspect of preparing for chemical accident. And in the process of granting a reporting obligation on the basis of this definition of ‘Chemical Accident’, and establishing a punishment regulation for the loss of life caused by chemical accident, there is a problem that does not take into account the aspect of clarity. When interpreting a penal code, if an interpretation of the sentence results in unreasonable results, such as the purpose of legislation and unfair expansion of the scope of punishment, it can be interpreted more narrowly than usual, considering various factors such as the ideology of the law and order as a whole, the function and purpose of the penal code. Current regulations comprehensively define the concept of ‘Chemical Accident’. As a result, the scope of criminal penalties for the occurrence of chemical accidents has become too wide. This is somewhat problematic from the point of view of criminal justice. In other words, if a chemical leak occurs and an accident occurs, most of it will be a chemical accident, which means that it is highly likely to violate the principle of criminal justice, such as the principle of clarity. As such, the application of the current law's definition of chemical accident results in a rather unreasonable result. This shall be prevented. There are two ways. The method of interpreting the concept of chemical accident as defined by law somewhat narrowly and limitedly and to amending the relevant laws. Ultimately, it is desirable to revise the law. In revising the law, defining the concept of ‘Chemical Accidents’ in Article 2 (1) 13 of the Act concretely and limitedly is the simplest and most obvious way. However, this does not harmonize with other regulations other than the penalty clause, considering the system or purpose of the law as a whole. Therefore, it is advisable to leave the current definition of ‘Chemical Accident’ intact. However, the punishment scope should be reduced by stipulating a limited scope of punishment, such as punishing only chemical accidents caused by hazardous chemicals in the penalty regulations. This measure is more relevant to the basic purpose of the legislation of the Chemicals Control Act.