The Supreme Court of Korea pronounced that the court is not permitted to order the accused to make a donation and the like as the community service order of the Criminal Law. As there is no regulation about the definition, aim, types, contents, execution procedure of the community service order in the Criminal Law, This existing regulations about the community service order seem to be against the principle of “nulla poena sine lege." But the community service is a word with various meanings, and it is possible to give a concrete form to it by construction and let it be compatible with the principle. In my opinion to make restitution of an illegal profit, that is, make a donation can be a type of “the community service" of the Criminal Law for the following reason. 1) the community service means unpaid work or donation for the public weal in the common acceptation of the word. 2) the Probation Act doesn't provide that the court cannot order the accused to make a donation in the community service order(it just prescribes that the maximum execution limit is 500 hours when the court order the accused to provide unpaid work in the community service order). 3) the interpretation that making a donation can be a type of the community service not only closes a gap between imprisonment and suspended sentence, but also leads to a decision more harmonized with the accused's conditions. 4) the United Kingdom, United States of America, France, Germany, etc also try to interpret and manage the community service variously. The Supreme Court's decision conforms to the principle of “nulla poena sine lege” too rigidly. It’s a great pity that the Supreme Court's decision limit the types of community service.

The original ruling took into consideration the fact that the accused was a Chaebol owner and applied the concurrent offence punishment provisions and the discretionary sentence reduction system to lower the inferior limit of the penalty, and passed a suspended sentence. In order to divert public criticism, the original ruling also ordered a huge payment as a social contribution fund as a means of a community service order according to article 62-2 of the penal code. But the Supreme Court construed the concept of a community service order in a restrictive manner as ‘work or manual labor that can be imposed by the hour up to 500 hours.' As a result of this construction the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the original judgment that ordered the payment of a social contribution fund as a community service order. The original court maintained the suspended sentence by imposing a 300 hour community service instead of the original social contribution fund payment. Consequently the fairness of the examination of the offence was greatly impaired by lowering the inferior limit of the penalty to 3 years in a case in which the accused was proven guilty of 11 separate offences including one of which the penalty is stipulated as ‘life sentence or imprisonment for more than 5 years.' This ruling disclosed the problematic issues of the concurrent offence punishment provisions and the discretionary sentence reduction system that grant judges excessive discretion on weighing penalties. It is also legislatively meaningful that the case raised issues on introducing new forms of ‘suspended sentence conditional orders' such as fund payment orders or damage recovery orders.