환경보호에 있어서의 동물보호 및 생명체로서의 동물보호에 관한 검토

When we use the word ‘animal protection’, it usually means animal protection to avoid and prevent cruelty to animals. But in the perspective of law, it can also means protect of animals as a component of natural environment. And these two different notions do not fully coincide because the purpose and background of two are vastly different. Nevertheless people often assimilate two notions and this kind of approach make our legal system vague. For example, when a man deliberately kills an wild wolf just for fun, he will be punished for a crime of cruelty to animals by animal protection law. But in this case if that wolf was a protected wild animal, he also can be punished for a crime that he illegaly hunted a protected wild animal by wild fauna and flora protection law. But it is not clear that what legal system is prior to another one and what are the purposes of these two legal system. And the field of legislation studied is relatively young and, as such, is still establishing its basic tenets because there was a paucity of research on this kind of debates. So I shall now proceed to examine more closely our legal system about animal protection dealing with both two notions. To begin with, I would like to examine our legislation enacted for protection of animal as a natural environment in some detail. And in the following, I will examine our animal protection law that was recently amended. And I will suggest several alternative ideas about our legal system dealing with animal protection despite results of this study leave more to be investigated and answered by further research.