e. f. g. International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW); International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance(CPED); and Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) ２ The Government has not withdrawn the reservations that it has made to Article 22 (freedom of association) of ICCPR; Article 16 (1) (g) (right to choose a family name) of CEDAW; and Article 21 (a) (adoption authorization system) and Article 40 (2) (b) (v) (the guarantee of the right to a review by a higher authority or body) of CRC; and Article 25 (e) (subscription to life insurance) of CRPD. Although some progress has been made in improving the national legal and institutional arrangements which were in conflict with Article 16 (1) (g) (right to choose a family name) of the CEDAW and Article 21 (a) (adoption authorization system) of the CRC, consequently lowering the barrier to the withdrawal of the reservations concerned, the Government has not embarked on the procedure for the withdrawal of the reservations. ３ For more information on the comprehensive anti-discrimination law, see Recommendation 124.23 of the Theme B31 of the Annex. For more information on human rights of conscientious objectors, see Recommendation 124.45 of the Theme D42. ４ The average effective age of labour market exit in Korea was 72.9 years in 2014, which is the highest among the OECD nations and 7-8 years older than the OECD average (OECD, Pension at a Glance 2015, pp.161-162). According to the ‘2016 Statistics on the Aged’ by the Statistics Korea, an average person aged 65 or over will remain healthy for 9.1 years out of 20.9 years which is his or her residual life expectancy, which points to poor healthy conditions among the aged people who are expected to suffer illnesses for almost half of their residual life expectancy. The relative poverty rate of people aged 66 or over in Korea recorded 49.6% as in 2013, which was the highest among the OECD member states (4.4 times of the OECD average of 10.6% and more than double of the rate of 24.1% in Israel which ranked the 2nd), while the relative poverty rate of the entire population in Korea was 14.6%, which was not much different from the OECD average of the same year (11.9%). This indicates that the pace of povertization grows much faster with age in Korea. And the proportion of public pension beneficiaries among the people aged 65 or older is growing but was a mere 42.3% as in 2015. Among the people of 55-79 years of age, the total amount of public and private pension combined per month averaged about KRW 510,000. In particular, the beneficiaries of monthly KRW 1 million or more in pension (e.g. the beneficiaries of the Government Employee Pension) accounted for only 12.5%, whereas the beneficiaries of less than KRW 500,000 took up 75.2% of all pension beneficiaries and even the beneficiaries of less than KRW 250,000 recorded a high proportion of 49.5% (Statistics Korea, 2016 Statistics on the Aged). Accordingly, most of the pension beneficiaries find it difficult to escape from absolute poverty unless they have an additional source of income or financial support, such as earned income, family’s financial support or the benefit under the National Basic Livelihood Security scheme. In the meantime, the Basic Pension scheme which, starting from July 2014, provides a monthly benefit of about KRW 200,000 to 70% of the people aged 65 or over is of no significance to the older persons at the lowest poverty level because, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle of the Basic Pension scheme, the pension amount available to these people is offset by the amount of the NBLS benefit offered to them. While the suicide rate of total population in 2015 was 26.5 per every 100,000 persons, which was approximately twice the OECD average (12.1 persons, as in 2014), the suicide rate of people aged 65 years or older was much higher at 58.6 persons and the corresponding rate for sub-groups of aged people grew at a faster pace with age (37.1 persons among those of 65-69 years; 54.9 among those of 70-74; 72.5 among those of 75-79; and 83.7 among those of 80 or older). It was reported that the biggest cause of suicide among aged people was poverty, followed by family discord and loneliness (Statistics Korea, 2015 Population Census; and OECD Health Data 2015). To sum up, the faster growth in suicide rates 7 / 12