Korean TV crew visits Spokane

An international film crew examining sex offender laws could have gone anywhere in the United States.

But the Korean television team picked Spokane.

“What I’ve found is it’s very hard for a sex offender to live in Spokane, and the United States,” said Hyuk-Jin Noh, documentary director for Munhoa Broadcasting Corp. “In Korea, they live anonymously.”

Korean interest in the issue was prompted by national outrage over the vicious rape and murder of a 5-year-old by a known sex offender.”After that tragic incident, the public demand tougher laws,” Noh said.

The documentary director then researched programs that dealt with sex offenders who had been released from prison, including sex offender registry and housing, chemical castration, community notification and electronic monitoring systems.

When Noh asked an expert about which U.S. communities were best at “handling sex offenders,” he was told Spokane and the state of Vermont.

Noh chose Spokane primarily because of its community notification, said Marilyn Saunders, Community Oriented Policing Substations (COPS) director.

Volunteers with COPS often distribute fliers alerting residents when sex offenders have moved into a neighborhood. They also host community meetings to discuss concerns any residents may have about the offenders’ presence. COPS sites are located throughout Spokane County.

“To identify them in Korea would be a death sentence, true vigilantism,” Saunders said the television crew told her.

Noh and his cameraman traveled from Seoul, Korea, to Wisconsin and California, before arriving in Spokane on Wednesday. The two states are considering legislation that would require harsher punishments for sex offenders, including minimum prison terms, in-custody treatment and requiring electronic devices be worn while the offender is under supervision.

During the Spokane visit, the film crew spoke with detectives who monitor registered offenders and state Department of Corrections deputies who use electronic bracelets to track some of them. The television crew also went to a community meeting where neighbors are informed about sex offenders living nearby, and a COPS location in the Shadle area.

Lastly, the crew went to the New Washington apartments, a clean, nondescript building in the downtown area, where about 50 offenders live.

The apartment complex was a secondary reason the Korean television crew filmed the documentary in Spokane.

However, “the apartments are most surprising,” said Noh. “In Korea, it would be like a ghetto or a prison.”

After sex offenders do their prison term in Korea, they are done, the documentary director explained. There’s no probation. The only action that law enforcement can take is releasing the name of a sex offender.

“What they do in America cannot directly apply in Korea,” Noh said. “But I can give insight.”