Part 1 Korea’s Human Rights Status in 2021 Ⅰ. Introduction Human Rights is connected to everyone‘s life issues. Therefore, it is important to look at major social issues from the human rights perspective and try to present a suitable direction. However, the awareness on the human rights issues may be different for individuals, depending on their circumstances and value, and comprehensively describing a society‘s human rights situation is a difficult task. Similarly, assessing whether a society‘s human rights level has improved or deteriorated since the previous year is also extremely difficult. International organizations and NGOs create an annual index to compare the human rights level of countries around the world. However, these are insufficient to assess the degree of people’s experience on human rights protection and the improvement and degree of development in the government’s human rights policies. Collecting objective and reliable quantitative data on the human rights related cases and status each year is expensive, and there is a limit as to simply compare the countries, having different historical and social backgrounds, with quantitative indices. Pursuant to Article 29(1) of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea Act,1) this report is prepared to describe the human rights situation and improvement measures for 2021. We selected the major cases and issues during 2021 and they were described in terms of the status and assessment. Of course it is better to look at major human issues and cases, systematic efforts to protect 1) Article 29 (Preparation, etc. of Reports) ① The Commission shall prepare an annual report on its activities for the preceding year, the human rights situation and improvement measures and shall report thereon to the President of the Republic of Korea and the National Assembly. 3