UPR Sexual Rights Database

National Report:
Para 16) The Government shifted the paradigm of policy on women to gender mainstreaming, aiming at achieving gender equality by more effective use of the policies that had been in place, including Gender Impact Analysis and Assessment, Gender Budget and Gender Statistics. The Committee on Gender Equality has been tasked with duties including coordination, cooperation, and execution of policies on gender equality by central government and local government. A new obligation on the ODA to make efforts to encourage equal participation of both genders and to develop measures to ensure gender equality in the programs was introduced.
Para 26) The Government introduced the Comprehensive Plan to Prevent Domestic Violence in 2011, expanded the scope of institutions obliged to receive mandatory education on the prevention of domestic violence, and exerted its effort to raise awareness of domestic violence and its elimination. Police stations at all levels have been deployed with police officers exclusively in charge of domestic violence. The Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Crimes of Domestic Violence was amended to strengthen the early response to domestic violence, granting the police with authority to enter the site of violence to investigate; allowing the victims or their legal representatives to request a protective order by the court; and imposing punishment on anyone who fails to comply with an urgent interim measures. The change of resident registration number has been allowed since May 2017, for the victims of sexual violence, domestic violence, or sex trade who either have been damaged or are at risk of damage from the leakage of resident registration number and this policy will further be complemented taking into account the needs of the victims of violence. Moreover, the Government will enact a comprehensive and general legislation for the prevention of gender-based violence.
Para 42) To ensure non-discrimination against women and achieve gender equality, the Government wholly revised the Framework Act on Women’s Development into the Framework Act on Gender Equality. The paradigm of the policies on women shifted from women’s development to the actual gender equality. All Government agencies are now responsible for taking up measures for gender mainstreaming in the course of performing their duties. The revised Act newly stipulates provisions concerning the Gender Impact Analysis and Assessment, Gender Budgeting, Gender Statistics, Education on Gender Sensitivity, and developing and announcing the Gender Equality Index. The national gender equality index is composed of eight categories and 23 indices, including economic activity, decision making, education and career training, welfare, health care, safety, family, and culture and information.
Para 44) In order to address the inequality of women in employment and labour market, the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act stipulates the principle of equal pay for equal work, the violation of which is subject to criminal punishment. Various policies have been put in place to enable work-family balance and prevent women’s career break, such as childcare leave, part-time job, flexible work arrangements, and the establishment of infrastructure for telecommuting and ubiquitous working. Childcare leave was expanded in 2014 to allow the parents with children under the age 8 or grade 2 to take the leave up to one year. In order to promote paternity leave, the Government introduced a Father’s Month program since 2014. If both parents take the childcare leave successively for the same child, the childcare benefit for the second parent is raised to 100% of their ordinary monthly wage up to KRW 1.5 million for the first month of childcare leave.

UN Compilation:
Para 53) The HR Committee was concerned about discrimination against women and about the small proportion of women in decision-making positions, the high rate of women in irregular employment and the high wage gap between men and women.
Para 54) The Working Group on business and human rights noted that women reportedly left the labour force at a high rate when they married or had children and found it difficult to reenter the workforce after a career break. ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations welcomed the measures taken by the Government to reconcile work and family responsibilities as a means of improving women’s participation in employment and requested the Government to continue its efforts.

Stakeholder Summary: Para 9) NHRCK reported on the under-representation of women in the labour market. Women often had to take up low paid non regular jobs. Balancing work and family life remained difficult largely due to the lack of decent public day care facilities and the low use of paternity leaves. The Government has made some efforts to increase employment rates of women and younger people, but those efforts had limited effect in the last three years.
Para 72) JS2 reported on discrimination against women and on the gender wage gap. Additionally, about 53 percent of women employees were in non-regular jobs.

National Report:
Para 55) The Government amended the Criminal Act to newly stipulate the crime of human trafficking in order to ratify the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The amended Criminal Act expanded the purpose of kidnapping and abduction, along with the previously stipulated purpose of “engaging in an indecent act, sexual intercourse or marriage, or for gain” and “transportation of a person out of the Republic of Korea”, to include the purpose of “labour exploitation, sex trafficking, or the acquisition of organs”. The consequentially aggravated crimes of human trafficking were also more specified into bodily injury and murder and death, in line with the principle of liability. A person who recruits, transfers, or delivers another with the intent to commit human trafficking has become principal rather than accessory under the amended Criminal Act, as such acts are defined as distinct acts of crimes. The provision of universal jurisdiction has been introduced so as to punish foreign nationals in the territory of the Republic of Korea, who have committed the same crime outside the Republic of Korea. The Government presented the bill for the consent of the ratification of the Protocol on Trafficking in Persons, which passed National Assembly in 2015 and the instrument of ratification was deposited with the United Nations. The Protocol took effect in Korea on 5 December 2015.