One of the most fundamental rights we have as human beings is the right to defend ourselves from attacks. After all, as a human, you have a right to exist, and any attack that threatens that requires a use of force up to and including taking the life of the attacker. You have a right to exist, and no one has a right to try and change that.

But not every country defends such a right, though. Take this instance from Korea:

A man has received a prison sentence for assaulting a driver who attacked him first.

The Seoul Eastern District Court sentenced the man, 39, to eight months in prison Saturday for retaliating against a driver, 52, who hit him first with a weapon after an argument about the driver’s driving style.

On the other hand, the court gave the driver a suspended prison sentence.

According to the prosecution, the driver hit the younger guy with a “blunt weapon” in anger last September after repeatedly being told to drive slowly.

But the younger man took the weapon from the driver and attacked him back with it, leaving the older man with injuries requiring six weeks of medical treatment.

The younger man claimed he acted in self-defense, but the court said he had other options, including simply running away from the situation. Judge Jang Dong-min said the behavior should be considered an assault that was obviously beyond what should be allowed under the self-defense law.

He could have run away?

And people wonder why I support Stand Your Ground laws.

The guy had a car and a recent history of violence. Maybe it’s just me, but running away might not be the best way to escape from a guy with a car. Instead, responding with force put an end to the attack.

Meanwhile, the jackwagon who started this got a suspended sentence.

And this was South Korea, not the backward hellhole known as North Korea. This is South Korea, which is supposed to be an enlightened society.

Guess what? They’re not.

But this could easily happen here if we’re not careful. Stand Your Ground laws are important not because they allow people to use lethal force–that right already existed–but because it takes away any requirement to try and retreat from an attacker. The younger man, in this case, wouldn’t even have been prosecuted in most states.

And this isn’t the only time in recent history we’ve seen someone faced prosecution for acting in self-defense. Most famously was a British man who stabbed a burglar after the criminal and a partner woke him up and forced him into the kitchen. While that gentleman was eventually released without charges being filed, he still faced prison time for what should be a natural and lawful act.

The truth is, outside of the United States, the argument of self-defense isn’t the same thing. Stand Your Ground laws, and other measures that protect the rights of law-abiding citizens who act in self-defense, are essential, as the kind of thinking that has infected these other countries tries to worm its way into our system.

We protect our right to self-defense zealously for one simple reason: We don’t tend to give up our rights easily, nor should we.