Issue 27. Children of imprisoned parents – in relation to para. 8 (f) of the List of Issues 94. The estimated number of children (in ages of minority) of imprisoned parents in the Republic of Korea, which is based on the 2017 Survey on Human Rights Situations of Children of Imprisoned Parents conducted by the NHRCK, is about 22,000 on daily average and about 54,000 in a year. The Survey showed that the children witnessed their parents being arrested in 6.3% of the cases and that, in terms of care-givers, the imprisoned parent’s spouse took up the largest share with 72.4%, but the children lived only with their siblings in 2.4%; they were in institutional care in 2.1%; they were being taken care of by relatives or acquaintances, respectively, in 1.8% and 1.5%; and their situation was not known in 1.5%, which confirms that proper care is not being given to some of those children. Moreover, 70% of the imprisoned parents said that they had never seen their child since their arrest. Meanwhile, many of the children complained about the difficulty and complexity of the procedural requirements for their meeting with their imprisoned parents. 95. In response, the NHRCK recommended, in March 2019, the Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency to amend the relevant regulations to avoid violating the rights of the child who is present at the time of his/her parent’s arrest or detention and create a process to identify, at an earlier time, the children who will have no care-giver with the parent’s imprisonment, in order to ensure that the rights of children of imprisoned parents are considered at all stages, including at the time of arrest, in legal proceedings and in the course of law enforcement. At the same time, the NHRCK recommended the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to check if a defendant has a child who is absolutely in need of the defendant’s care-giving before sentencing the defendant to a sanction of confinement, and recommended the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to install a child-friendly family meeting room within every correctional facility and activate various types of meetings, in order to guarantee children’s right to meet their imprisoned parents. 96. In April 2019, the Government revised the relevant legislation and, consequently, new inmates shall be informed that they can ask for a protective disposition for their minor child and male inmates are also allowed to meet their minor child at a meeting room with no blocking structure between the meeting people, which was previously possible only for female inmates. 97. In order to ensure that the rights of inmates' children are protected in the course of criminal law enforcement, the Government should put the NHRCK's relevant recommendations fully into practice and work out the measures to support inmates' children. 24