National Human Rights Commission of Korea’s Opinion Regarding the Preparation of the List of Issues Prior to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ Review of the Fourth State Report by the Republic of Korea INTRODUCTION 1. National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) submits this written opinion for the preparation of the List of Issues by the Pre-sessional Working Group of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), prior to the CESCR’s consideration of the Fourth State Report on the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) submitted by the Government of the Republic of Korea. 2. NHRCK, as an independent national human rights institution, wishes to be of any help to the CESCR’s preparation of the List of Issues, by coming up with nineteen issues about which some questions need to be asked to the Government of the Republic of Korea (ROK) with regard to the State Party’s implementation of the ICESCR. LIST OF ISSUES Issue 1: National Implementation of the ICESCR and the NHRCK Current status 3. The CESCR, in its previous three Concluding Observations, had repeatedly expressed its concerns that the Covenant rights were not fully guaranteed under the national legislation of ROK and the Government had not made full efforts to improve this situation. Nevertheless, in practice, few direct jurisdictional decisions have been made in regard of a variety of social rights violations, and the NHRCK’s investigation is confined to some fundamental rights specified in Articles 10 to 22 of the Constitution, with no remedial procedures in place to address infringements on social rights in the State Party. 4. The NHRCK Act currently in force does not admit that some of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, including right to education (Article 31), right to work (Articles 32 and 33), right to social security (Article 34), right to environment (Article 35) and maternity protection (Article 36), which are also treated as being important in the ICESCR, also should be subject to the NHRCK’s investigation. 5. Considering that the ICESCR Optional Protocol (OP-ICESCR) took effect on 5 May 2013 and several decisions have been made about the individual complaints submitted to the CESCR, it is important to consider, as one of the ways to promote the implementation of the ICESCR, the idea of expanding the coverage of the NHRCK’s investigation so that the NHRCK may be able to make recommendations for the guarantee of social rights. 2 / 25