About
A working dataset
of unequal sentences.
What if the law applies one rule to ramen, and another to billions?
JusticeLens Korea began as a high-school research project asking a single question: when the same offense produces wildly different sentences, is the proportionality principle still doing its job?
We collect publicly reported Korean sentencing outcomes — bus drivers fired for taking ₩2,400, chaebol heirs given suspended sentences for billions, sitting judges reprimanded for the same DUI that costs an ordinary citizen a fine and a license — and we put them next to each other.
The goal is not to argue every case was decided wrong. It is to make the patterns legible: where mitigators flow only one way, where bright-line thresholds are designed around, and where presidential pardons quietly undo years of judicial deliberation.
The work is journalistic and educational — not legal advice. Every case links to its source. Every claim is checkable. Where empirical patterns are reported, the underlying datasets are cited.
What we stand on
Equality before the law
Article 11 of the Korean Constitution promises that no one is privileged before the law. Sentencing is where that promise either holds or breaks.
Proportionality
Punishment should be necessary, suitable, and balanced. We document where the balance test seems to tip systematically by class.
Public reasoning
Judicial decisions are public documents. Citizens — including high schoolers — can read them, question them, and trace patterns across them.
Sources you can check
Every case in our database links to publicly available news coverage, Sentencing Commission documents, or appellate-court opinions. We do not invent facts.
Team
Junseo Lee 이준서
Founder & Researcher
A high-school student researching Korean sentencing disparity and the proportionality principle. Junseo started JusticeLens to make the gap between guideline-on-paper and guideline-in-practice legible to a general audience.
Where the data comes from
Supreme Court of Korea
Final criminal appeals + 종합법률정보 case search
Sentencing Commission
Published advisory ranges and methodology
Korean Institute of Criminology & Justice
Empirical sentencing-pattern datasets
Major Korean dailies & broadcasters
Court-day reporting and verdict coverage (한겨레·경향·조선·중앙·동아·연합·MBC·JTBC·KBS)
Contact
Researchers, journalists, students, or anyone with a citation we should add — please reach out.
Email: contact@justicelens.kr
Based in: Seoul, South Korea