Yul Kwon:
This week, South Korea is planning to chemically castrate a repeat sex offender. It'll be the first time someone in South Korea receives this punishment. The man was convicted of raping or molesting young girls four times. And based on psychiatric evaluations, the government decided that he was likely to prey on children again when he was released. Yoo Eun Lee from Global Voices tells us how Koreans are reacting to the news online.

Yoo Eun Lee:
A repeat child rapist, only known as Park, is the first-ever sentenced to chemical castration in South Korea. He is also the first in Asia to face such punishment. To weaken his sexual urges, an injection will be given to him every three months for the next three years.

South Koreans applauded. This Twitter user wrote:
"As a person raising a daughter, I'm all for chemical castration."

And there were numerous net users half-jokingly calling for harsher punishments, such as:
"I heard chemical castration costs quite a lot of money. I am voting for 'physical' castration."

The sentence imposed on Park is widely seen as the justice authorities' reaction to public worries about a spike in sexual assault against children and mounting anger on light punishment for offenders.

This user wrote:
"The chemical castration should be applied to any sex offenders who rape children, whether it is their first crime or not. It doesn't make sense to me at all that we wait for those offenders to repeat such crime once, twice and three times before chemically castrating them."

Some argue that chemical castration poses a human rights issue. They point to countries like Britain that allow voluntary castration for sex offenders as an alternative to prison. However, many South Koreans supported the measure and even go so far as denouncing human rights groups for "siding with criminals." I am Yoo Eun Lee, for LinkAsia.