17 Issue 24. Child Protection Agency 1) Current status 76. Currently, in 2018, the local child protection agencies number 62 and engage in preventing child abuse and identifying, protecting, and treating abused children according to the Child Welfare Act. The length of continuous service of counselors in the agencies is merely two years and ten months on average, which is hardly enough time to become experts by any standard. In addition, they suffer from substandard working conditions; as of 2016, one counselor is in charge of 64 cases on average and works about 3,635 hours a year while actual available time per counselor is reportedly 1,961 hours. 2) Questions 77. Does the government have a plan to establish more agencies? What is the government's measure to make the agencies better accessible to field? 78. What is the government's policy to improve the counselor's working conditions and facilitate their expertise? Issue 25. Protection for Abused Children 1) Current status 79. Released by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office on April 12, 2016, the registered number of child abusers in violation of the Criminal Act (Hard Labor by Child), the Child Welfare Act, and the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Child Abuse Crimes has increased from 183 in 2011 to 2,691 in 2015, a whopping nearly six fold increase from 459 in 2013 when the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Child Abuse Crimes has yet to be legislated. The number of indictees also grows nearly tenfold in 2015 from merely 49 in 2011. 80. The 2016 National Child Abuse Status Report says that the number of repeated child abuse in 2016 was 1,591, accounting for 8.5% of the entire child abuse. As repeated abuse which incurs within a year from the initial identification of the abuse takes up 48.8%, a 6.4%p year-on-year increase, it is critical to prevent the repetition of the crime and intervene at an early stage so that the abuse does not become routine. The Ministry of Health and Welfare regards the incidence of repeated abuse as a performance benchmark; however, it fails to offer specific plans on how to manage an abuse case effectively to stop repetition and how