abuse, and secure a legal foundation which forbids the head of a child welfare facility to
refuse to accept such migrant child and imposes a sanction on the violator of such ban.
Furthermore, the Government should find out a way to give a financial support to a child
welfare facility to which a migrant victim of child abuse is admitted so that an adequate
cost may be covered by the financial support.
Issue 34. Migrant children under 6 years of age – in relation to para. 9 (a)
of the List of Issues
124. With the revision of the Child Care Act in 2013, the childcare fee subsidy whose
availability was previously limited to children in low-income families, children with disabilities
and children in multicultural families has been greatly expanded to include all pre-school
children under 6 years of age, regardless of their family income, and the subsidy may take the
form of the childcare fee subsidy for children who attend a day care center or the childcare
allowance for children who are in family-based care.
125. However, the eligible beneficiaries of the childcare fee subsidy are confined to 'Korean
nationals with the resident registration number' and, therefore, migrant children are excluded
from the scope of beneficiaries. Consequently, migrant children's parents who cannot afford to
pay day-care expenses are forced to leave the children alone at home or bring the children to
their workplace of poor environmental conditions, which is threatening the safe and healthy
growth of migrant children.
126. The MOHW has the position that, as the Framework Act on Social Security provides that
the eligible recipients of social security benefits are 'Korean nationals' and most of the
individual social security programs do not recognize foreigners as qualified recipients, those
who are eligible to the childcare fee subsidy should be the children aged 0~5 who have Korean
nationality and have been granted the resident registration number in a normal way under the
Resident Registration Act.
127.
The Government's support for children's care is aimed at ensuring the safe and healthy
growth of all children under 6 years of age, and it is desirable that this support should be also
guaranteed for migrant children, as a special protection measure. In particular, it can be said that the
childcare fee subsidy is one of the factors that are most closely related to the safe and healthy growth
of children under 6 years of age. In May 2019, the NHRCK recommended the Minister of Health
and Welfare to specify the relevant obligations of the national and local governments and the
provisions concerning the implementation of those obligations which are prescribed in the CRC, in
the Child Care Act; to revise the relevant legislation and upgrade the relevant guidelines in order to
ensure that the childcare-related rights are guaranteed for all children under 6 years of age, including
migrant children, in this country; and to take positive actions to increase public awareness that migrant
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