A Study on the Key Issues of Legislation of Anti-discrimination Act: Focusing on the Bills of Equality Act Proposed to the National Assembly

Abstract

This article aims at figuring out the key issues of legislation through the analysis of the bills of Equality Act or Anti-discrimination Act proposed to the National Assembly, based on the preliminary overview of legislative movement for the enactment of Anti-discrimination Act and the short history of legislation over the fifteen years since Ro Moo-hyun government in Korea. Key issues are picked out as follows through examining four bills proposed to the the National Assembly(Hye-young Jang’s Bill under the name of the Anti-discrimination Act and Sang-min Lee’s Bill, Joo-min Park’s Bill, and In-sook Kwon’s Bill under the name of the Equality Act) : the appropriate name of anti-discrimination law, types of discrimination, areas(scopes) and grounds of discrimination, exceptions of discrimination, instrument of remedy of discrimination, adoption of the compensatory and punitive damages. All the Bills agreed that ‘gender identity’ and ‘status of employment’ should be added to the current nineteen grounds of discrimination stipulated in the National Human Rights Commission Act as the protected characteristics of grounds of discrimination. Hye-young Jang’s Bill includes two more grounds of discrimination such as language and nationality. Furthermore, this study is suggesting to add three more characteristics of grounds of discrimination such as academic background, occupation, and engagement in labor union because those characteristics are very influential in Korean culture. Four bills are commonly suggesting to expand the scopes of discrimination by adding ‘the supply or use of administrative services et. al’ to the current three scopes (employment, the supply or use of goods and services, education) under the National Human Rights Commission Act. They also accepted the broad conception of discrimination which includes indirect discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment and the discriminatory advertisement or expression as well as direct discrimination. Consequently the equality act need to extend the conception and types of discrimination beyond the National Human Rights Commission Act. According to all of the Bills, not only the affirmative action but genuine occupational qualification(BFOQ) in employment should be accepted as the exception of discrimination. In order for the effective enforcement of the equality act, all the Bills are adopting the new instruments of remedy such as the corrective order, the support of litigation of the National Human Rights Commission, provisional or positive measures by the court decision, and the compensatory and punitive damages for the harmful discrimination. These key issues should be considered in the legislation of the anti-discrimination act or the equality act in the near future.