The Republic of Korea has become not only G20 member country but also OECD member country owing to political and economic development. Currently, international society is asking Korea to play role of advanced country so that the nation has paid attention not to beneficiary but to donor in international society to become an advanced country. In particular, Korea is expected to play role of liaison between advanced countries and developing countries that shall be applied to criminal policy area as well.
Since the year of 2009, Korea Institute of Criminalogy (KIC) has joined the AsiaJust Project of Asia Pacific branch of UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as an official partner to build up supranational judicial assistance system and to give underdeveloped countries in Asia judicial support in accordance with changes of role of Korea.
Mutual assistance should be done not in one way but in two ways. KIC has researched judicial system of advanced countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany and the UK. So, KIC has not researched judicial system of Asia and Pacific nations enough despite rapid increase of human resources and physical properties with those nations to have insufficient information and material. KIC may have difficulties at judicial assistance because it has not enough information on judicial system of Asia and Pacific nations. So, KIC planned studies on criminal law focused on South East Asia, and firstly researched the Philippines that had criminal law system of the Continental Law same as Korea and made use of official language of English until recent days that was familiar to the Korean people. This study was focused on translation and introduction of the revised penal code of the Philippines. Translation of the penal code was not enough to let readers understand, so that Chapter 3 introduced general provisions of the penal code of the Philippines and Chapter 4 did contents of each part of the penal code of the Philippines.
Introduction based on the penal code system of the Philippines may produce confusion and disturbance because of difference of penal code between both countries: Therefore, Chapter 3 described punishment system of the Philippines as well as overall contents of the general provision, and Chapter 4 investigated crimes and punishment of both countries in accordance with system of rules of the Criminal Law of Korea.
To help understand penal code system of the Philippines, Chapter 2 described geo-politic, historical and cultural background of the Philippines. And, Chapter 5 gave some of political implications, for instance, public servants’ duty ethics based on outcome of penal code study of the Philippines, cancellation of death penalty against political prisoners, classification or grading of deprivation of the freedom, unification of penal code, punishment against keeping of crime tools, and counteractions against Kopino.