National Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea awareness about the situations of irregular jobs, while the need to establish policies to protect human rights of the socially deprived at the state level continued to come to the fore due to a number of social tragedies including a mother and her two daughters who killed themselves after suffering for a long time from economic difficulties, and a security guard at an apartment complex who burned himself to death because of being frustrated by degrading treatment. A massive leak of personal information from credit card companies, a controversial cyber surveillance on Kakaotalk (a mobile messenger application), and the practice of monitoring the personal lives of baseball players through closed-circuit television raised citizens’ interest in privacy protection while the restriction over the screening of the film “Diving Bell” and the cancellation of exhibiting the painting “Sewolowol” ignited social debates about the freedom of expression. Moreover, fierce arguments, for and against discriminatory measures based on sexual orientation such as banning a cultural event of LGBT, caused deep social conflicts. Meanwhile, the international community enhanced its efforts to improve North Korean human rights by adopting the Resolution on the Human Rights Situation in the DPRK at the UN General Assembly. Accordingly, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea stepped up the move to enact a North Korean Human Rights Act, creating a positive environment, both in and out of Korea, to improve the human rights situation in North Korea. On the other hand, unfortunately the International Coordinating Committee of NHRIs’ Sub-Committee on Accreditation deferred the review of the NHRCK’s reaccreditation twice (March and November) for the lack of transparency in the process of selecting its commissioners. In a nutshell, the year 2014 saw a wide range of issues in diverse sectors including the right to freedom, social rights, and human rights in North Korea raised and debated Introduction ▪▪▪ 5