Moreover, as for the perception on respecting human rights in Korea, 88.4% responded
that their human rights are being “respected,” which has increased continuously since
2019 (71.3%), but 74.7% responded that human rights of the overall society is being
respected, which is a slight decrease as compared to 2021 (77.8%). Approximately half of
the people responded positively on a question whether the human rights of the vulnerable
social classes and minorities are being respected, and specifically, the responses indicated
women (84.6%), children/youth (81%), elderly (71%), people with disabilities (50.4%) and
immigrants (36.2%).2)
The frequency of encountering the term ‘human rights’ is a criterion that can determine
the degree of interest on human rights and the opportunity to come across the human rights
concept. The number of people who encounter the term ‘human rights’ (almost daily,
relatively often and sometimes) remains at 80%. However, the ratio of people who encounter
frequently continues to decrease since 2020, from 36.7% to 28.9%, but the ratio of people
who encounter sometimes continues to increase, from 43.2% to 51.5%. It shows that the
frequency of encountering the term ‘human rights’ is decreasing overall. Specifically, the
responses differed depending on the individual backgrounds—women, people over the age
of 60 and people with lower educational level tend to encounter the term less frequently.
However, when looking at the time series trend on people’s awareness of human rights
violations and discrimination in Korea, Korea’s human rights situation has somewhat
improved. People who responded that Korea’s human rights violation is “serious (very and
slightly)” decreased 7.0%p from 2021 (41.8%) to 34.8%, and “serious (very and slightly)”
discrimination also decreased 9.9%p from 2021 (47.4%) to 37.6%. Except for 2021, the year
that showed large increase in seriousness of human rights violations and discrimination, they
are gradually decreasing since 2019.
The ratio of people who had experienced human rights violations and discrimination have
also decreased. In case of human rights violations, civic and political rights violation is less
than 4% and economic and social rights violation is less than 7%. For discrimination, 14.3%
of the people experienced discrimination, for whatever reason, during the past 1 year, which
is higher than the experience of human rights violation, but is a decrease from the past – 2019
(28.2%), 2020 (29.5%), and 2021 (19.6%).
2) The time series graph for all items are not same due to the difference in the questions for each year.
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