Republic of Korea

Like Japan, Korea is a developed donor country in the region and disability is one of the target areas for the ILO/Korea Fellowship Programme, which is funded by the ILO/Korea Fund. With regard to disability issues the ILO collaborates with the Korean Employment Promotion Agency for the Disabled (KEPAD).

In this calendar year, the programme will establish a sister-school relationship between a Korean and Thai training institution to facilitate the vocational training of people with severe disabilities. This will follow-up on the 2005 training programme, offered by “Skills Development Techniques and Employment Services for People with Severe Disabilities” that was offered to representatives from Thailand, Viet Nam, China and Mongolia.

The second activity for 2006 will be a workshop in Seoul entitled “Practical Approaches to Involving Business in the Training and Employment of People with Disabilities---Examples from Korea.” It will build on the 2005 workshop “Tripartite Training on Employment Promotion Policy and Administration of an Employment Quota System and Fund for People with Disabilities”. In the latter workshop, KEPAD highlighted how it implements its quota system. However, since many companies chose to pay the levy instead of promoting the hiring of disabled workers, KEPAD has taken more positive and proactive measures, such as public relations campaigns, partnerships and designing customized training programmes for disabled persons. These practical, positive initiatives will be the focus on this years’ training fellowship programme.

An excellent example of one such programme is the KEPAD/CJ Telenix programme to train physically disabled persons to work from their homes to fill orders from the CJ Telenix home shopping network. KEPAD recruits, screens and helps select trainees for the programme and provides pre-employment training. CJ Telenix provides additional training and home-based work stations. The disabled marketing consultants work from their homes, talk to customers, find out what they want to buy and process the paperwork. It is one example of the work that KEPAD is doing to engage businesses more fully in the training and employment of disabled persons.

In October 2004, KEPAD sponsored and international symposium entitled Creation of a New Employment Strategy and a theme of Participation and Opportunity --- Who’s Responsibility? As a contribution to the meeting, the ILO served as a resource person and submitted the paper Toward Decent Work for People with Disabilities: ILO Perspectives on Employment and Skills Development, which was the basis for its presentation. The paper and presentation dealt with disability as a human rights issue, discussed globalization and its impact and the rise in corporate interest in disability in the workplace, as well as offering ILO standards as a foundation for developing policies.

The symposium addressed the Government’s commitment to introduce antidiscrimination legislation in South Korea. It plans to maintain its quota system as well.

A contingent from the Republic of Korea attended the ILO Technical Consultation in Bangkok and a consultant prepared a draft paper on the rehabilitation activities in the country (see regional meeting). The ILO also included one of the welfare enterprises, Eden House, as an example of good practice for inclusion in Moving Forward: Toward Decent Work for People with Disabilities. To learn more about Eden House and the man behind its development, Mr. Jung Duk-Whan, himself severely disabled, consult the following:

• Eden House
  Cleaning Up and Creating Work---How Trash Bags Raise the Self-Esteem and Incomes of People with Multiple and Severe Disabilities in the Republic of Korea (pdf)

For more information about disability related laws and policies and the country consult our National Laws and Information pages.

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