• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.47-82
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• 2019

Inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation, in the process, will inevitably lead to various legal disputes, one of which is the issue of compensation for personal injury. The purpose of this study is to present the standards of settlement of disputes between the residents of North and South Korea by examining the North Korean compensation law on the calculation of damages due to personal injury and comparing it with the South Korean compensation law. Understanding the North Korean compensation law is a critical and urgent task, as exchanges and cooperation between the two Koreas are expected to increase in the future. For the South Korean compensation law does not have specific provisions on the estimation of damages, the specific methods and standards for estimating damages are determined by court precedents. The South Korean courts categorize the damages caused by personal injury into active property damages, passive property damages and emotional distress damages and calculate the amount of each damages. On the other hand, the North Korean Compensation for Damage Act stipulates the categories of damage by dividing the cases of personal injury into 1) infringement of health(§41), 2) disability due to infringement of health(§42), and 3) death resulting from human infringement(§44). In addition, the North Korea Compensation for Damage Act specifies the calculation of compensation for damages(§43, §51). Furthermore, South Korea widely acknowledges emotional distress damages for personal injury, whereas North Korea does not recognize emotional distress damages in principle.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.179-214
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• 2012

There are two opinions on the legal characteristics of damages for non-pecuniary loss, a private sanctions theory and complementary function of damages for non-pecuniary loss, briefly. There is a close connection between the legal characteristics and the function of damages for non-pecuniary loss. The functions of damages for non-pecuniary loss are consist of satisfaction, prevention( sanctions) and complementation. Several cases of medical injury relief reported to Korea Comsumer Agency are categorized as follows, 1) cases of death after having an operation, 2) diagnosed with disability after a medical accident, 3) extended damages happening related to delayed diagnosis, 4) et cetera(a plastic surgery, a treatment with oriental medicine), and the damages for non-pecuniary loss in respect to each cases are examined. In the case of occurring death or disability, Korea Comsumer Agency has set up guidelines for assessment of damages for non-pecuniary loss by classifying into major and collateral violation for a duty of care. Furthermore, the damages for non-pecuniary loss in the case of all sorts of cancers, are assessed in accordance with the degree of responsibility subsequent to dividing cancer into good and poor prognosis. When it comes to a complementary function of damages for non-pecuniary loss in the actual work, it is hard to assess the damages as it is difficult to objectify non-pecuniary loss, such as emotional distress. Though compensation for damages is major legal characteristics of consolation money, preventing a damage(private sanctions) through consolation for a victim or sanctions against an assailant also has great significance. Therefore, it is necessary to approach flexibly for mutual agreement by considering specialty( concrete facts) of individual issue thoroughly. If considering this aging society that limits the possible age for work to 60 years old, it is needed to have a complementary function of consolation money in mind not to make it less meaningful for victims due to small sum of consolation money.

• Journal of the Korean society of biological therapies in psychiatry
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.129-141
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• 2018

Suicide is a behavior that is intended to cause death by itself and requires medical treatment, resulting in suicidal attempt or completion. Suicide causes loss of life, damages the body, costs a lot of medical expenses, and causes families to fall into sorrow and suffering therefore this suicide is a huge loss to family and society. There have been attempts to reduce and prevent suicide by understanding the mechanism of suicide. The mechanism of suicide can be thought of as psychological mechanism and biological mechanism. In the past, if we considered the psychological and biological mechanisms separately, the development of neuroscience now connects and integrates these two. Psychological factors affect biological factors and biological temperaments also affect perception or thinking about the situation and increase psychological vulnerability. Distant factors in suicidal behavior-such as childhood adversity and family and genetic predisposition-increase the lifetime risk of suicide. They alter the response to stress and other processes through changes in gene expression and regulation of emotional and behavioral characteristics. Distant factors affect the biological system and consequently changes in these systems can increase the risk of suicide. In other words, the distal factor does not directly induce suicidal behavior but rather acts indirectly through developmental or mediating factors. These mediating factors are impulsive aggressive and anxious trait, and chronic use of substances. The mechanism of this disorder is the abnormality of the serotonin system and the abnormality of the lipid level. Proximal factors are associated with the onset of suicide events and include changes in the major neurotransmitter systems, inflammatory changes, and dysfunction of glial cells in the brain. A series of studies, including a variety of research methods and postmortem and in-vivo imaging studies, show the impairment of the serotonergic neurotransmitter system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress response system for suicidal behavior. These disorders lead to suicidal behavior due to difficulty in cognitive control of mood, pessimism, reactive aggression, abnormality in problem solving abilities, excessive response to negative social signals, severe emotional distress, and cognitive dysregulation of suicidal ideation.