Human Rights Commission: "National Pension Service to Reflect Characteristics of Visual Impairments in Disability Service Investigations"

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) announced on the 26th that the National Pension Service (NPS) has accepted its recommendation to reflect the characteristics of visual impairments in the comprehensive survey for disability service support.

On December 16th last year, the NHRCK recommended to the NPS Commissioner to faithfully incorporate itemized questions for visually impaired persons according to the guidebook, and to implement recurrence prevention measures including job training for surveyors to ensure the comprehensive survey is properly conducted.

The NPS’s disability activity support service determines service provision after assessing the condition of the disabled based on the comprehensive service support survey form and reviewing the results. To achieve the purpose of the comprehensive survey, measurement considering the type of disability is necessary; however, surveyors affiliated with the NPS failed to properly conduct the survey as they did not take into account the severity of visual impairment. In response, complainant A filed a complaint with the NHRCK regarding this matter.

The NHRCK stated, "Applying standards that do not consider disabilities without justifiable reasons in administrative procedures and service provision resulted in unfavorable outcomes for persons with disabilities," and judged this as an act of discrimination against persons with disabilities.

The NPS responded, "To enhance the professionalism of the comprehensive survey, we have established introductory and refresher courses for surveyors and developed plans to operate specialized training and disability sensitivity education to improve understanding of characteristics by disability type." The NPS conducted a total of four training sessions for 165 surveyors in the first half of this February.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.