NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF KOREA
Submission to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – July 2022
programs to account for up to 30% of 10% of the mandatory programming. In addition,
it contains compliance with accessibility to VOD platform services such as web and
mobile apps, but there are no compulsory regulations.
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In particular, persons with visual disabilities pointed out it is difficult to understand the
program such as character information and foreign language content because of poor
quality of descriptive narration of terrestrial broadcasting and general programming
channels.
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In addition, the current Copyright Act prescribes content on “literary works” in Article
33 (2)(Reproduction for the Hearing Impaired), but does not specify “broadcasting and
communication works”, making the production of descriptive narration itself a legal
controversy. In the case of video works, unlike literary works, the Copyright Act does
not suspend copyright if the original work is processed for non-profit purposes for
persons with visual disabilities. In order to provide descriptive narration, the original
work has to be processed, which in itself is a copyright violation.
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Creation of more than 22 special schools and creation and expansion of 1,250 special
classes
29
Basic study to establish mid-to-long term plans for lifelong education for persons with
disabilities(National Institute of Special Education, 2019)
30
Result of analysis of 2017 fact-finding survey on persons with disabilities
31
In April 2020, the Chair of the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea announced the
result of the audit on the operation of the social service electronic voucher project from
January 2016 to June 2019. During the presentation, he pointed out that 91 people with
a history of receiving treatment at medical institutions for more than 90 days for severe
mental diseases such as schizophrenia worked as social service providers, which exposed
service users to risk and unsecured quality of social service. He also notified the Ministry
of Health and Welfare to devise a plan to stipulate the disqualification reasons of service
providers for the 5 projects which did not have disqualification provisions as of the day
of audit in December 2019 and to encourage local governments to thoroughly check the
disqualification reason. In response, the Commission expressed its opinion to the Board
of Audit and Inspection to take cautious about audit results and recommendations that
may strengthen negative stereotypes and prejudices against patients with mental illness
or limit their rights.
32
Since 2018, the government has reinforced the criteria for the permission for the
exclusion from minimum wage application from less than 90% of the average work
capacity of the lowest worker among the workers of similar occupations receiving
minimum wage to less than 70%. However, the rate of workers with disabilities evaluated
to be more than 70% has significantly decreased from 9.7%(693 people) of people
received evaluation to 2.9%(282) in 2018 and 2.8%(256) in 2019. Accordingly, the
number of workers with disabilities excluded from the application of minimum wages
was 7,006 in 2015, ,7,935 in 2016, 8,632 in 2017, 9,413 in 2018, 9,000 in 2019, and
9,060 in 2020, increasing by 29.3% compared to 2015(Study on evaluation of
conversion project for workers with disability excluded from the minimum wage, Lee Suyong, Hwang Sung-ju, Employment Development Institute, Korea Employment Agency
for Persons with Disabilities, December 2021). In this regard, the Ministry of
Employment and Labor explained that this is partially affected by the an increase of
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workplaces requesting approval for exclusion of application of minimum wage such as