Chapter 2 Human Rights Counseling and Complaint Processing Section 1. Overview The Commission made efforts on diverse fronts to improve quality of its counseling service and enhance the public’s access to the Commission. To make itself more accessible to the public in need of counseling or raising complaints, the Commission organized a group of human rights counseling experts consisting of lawyers, certified labor attorneys, social workers, and therapists to address the public’s demand, notified counseling schedules of the experts on its website, and allowed the public to make appointments for counseling sessions. It also provided English counseling service daily and sign language interpretation service every Monday to accommodate the needs of foreigners and people with hearing-impairment. In addition, it offered advanced training to human rights counseling specialists in the 1st and 2nd half of the year, and provided psychological therapy sessions for the exhausted counselors. It also organized monthly case study seminars to discuss appropriate counseling approaches to address major cases, review applicable legal precedents, and share effective methodologies. To better serve people in vulnerable groups, the Commission went out to the field and conducted on-site counseling sessions around the country to issue remedies and reflect the field situation to its activities. A total of 9 on-site counseling sessions were carried out that were customized for specific needs of people with disabilities, refugees, migrant workers, senior citizens living alone, and the youth. Human rights issues in local cities and areas such as Boryoung, Ulrung-do, and Changwon were closely monitored as well. Monitoring of complaint boxes placed at correctional facilities and institutional group care facilities was an important undertaking of the Commission that sets a goal to protect Chapter 2 Human Rights Counseling & Complaint 67