UPR Sexual Rights Database

National Report:
Para 43) To tackle prejudice and discrimination against single-parent families, schools at all levels provide education on single-parent families and educate relevant officials on building up expertise on the matter. Furthermore, the Single-Parent Family Support Act was amended in 2016, which sets forth the principle of non-discrimination against children from single-parent families, when caring and educating children. The Government organizes the awareness campaign on single-parent families, while supporting teen fathers and teen mothers by means of additional child support subsidies, education subsidies to prevent academic suspension, and subsidies to support their financial independence. The Government also legislated the Act on Enforcing and Supporting Child Support Payment in 2014 to enable single parents with minor children to receive child support from noncustodial parents. The Child Support Agency was established in 2015 to offer a one-stop service covering consultations, negotiations, litigation and collection, and follow-up management.

National Report:
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.
Para 47) … Since 2013, the enforcement regulation was amended to broaden the scope of the workplace obligated to submit implementation plans. Under the previous regulation, workplaces that fall short of the 60% threshold of the proportion of female employee in the total employee compared to the industry average were obligated to submit the implementation plans. The amended regulation raised the threshold to 70%. The Government also introduced the scheme in which the list of the employers failing to implement proactive employment improvement measures are published, and set up the specific standards. As a result, the proportion of female workforce in the concerned public agencies increased to 36.4% in 2015 and 37.3% in 2016, and the proportion of female in the management increased to 15.9% in 2015 and 16.4% in 2016.

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 76) Among international human rights instruments, to which the Republic of Korea was recommended to accede at the first UPR, the Government signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008 ... The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was ratified with reservation to Article 25 (e) which conflicts with a domestic law, but the Government will consider withdrawing the reservation after completing the current amendment of the relevant statute.