4 Assessment and Challenges The year 2018 marked the initiation of the 5th phase of the Human Rights Promotion Action Plan and witnessed our continual efforts to push ahead with detailed plans for the realization of a society free of polarization and discrimination and ensuring respect for human rights and to develop new human rights agenda items. In accordance with the recommendations of the Innovation Committee in operation in 2017, we reinforced our transparency by probing the case of the blacklist of the Commission staff and improving the method of taking minutes, upgrading the Chairperson appointment procedures, and publishing materials to better human rights defenders' understanding of human rights. Such activities are evaluated to have contributed to the reinforcement of the Commission's status as an independent national institution. With the inauguration of the new Chairperson in September 2018, the four tasks of resolving hatred and discrimination, actively responding to polarization and the social safety net crisis, reinforcing the human rights partnerships with the central and local governments, and improving relations with human rights and civil society organizations were proposed, while the Planning Group for Response to Hatred and Discrimination was also formed. A string of sexual harassment and violence issues erupted from within the prosecution and the fields of culture and arts in relation to the #Me Too movement, which was one of the hottest topics in 2018. Although our existing organizational structure had its limitations in readily addressing these issues, we instantaneously undertook the ex officio investigation targeting the prosecution and launched the Special Investigation Team for Sexual Harassment and Violence in the Fields of Culture and Arts jointly with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. We also established the Joint Investigation Team for Sexual Violence Committed by the Military during the May 18 Democratization Movement in cooperation with the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, thus demonstrating our capacity to flexibly deal with diverse human rights issues. In order to stop the spread of negative public sentiment about asylum-seekers from Yemen on Jeju Island, we urged the government to aggressively redress biases and hostility towards them and come up with measures to promote their human National Human Rights Commission of Korea Annual Report 2018 31 Part 1 | Introduction Chapter