Park Joo-min proposes 'comprehensive anti-discrimination' bill tomorrow... Will it succeed this time?

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Ahn Jung-hoon = Rep. Park Joo-min of the Democratic Party of Korea will submit to the National Assembly an amendment to the Equality Act that prohibits discrimination in comprehensive areas such as sexual orientation, religion, and race.

On the 11th, Representative Park held a press conference with the Anti-Discrimination Legislation Solidarity and the Korean Federation of Women's Organizations at the National Assembly and announced on the 10th that he would propose a bill on equality (abbreviated as the Equality Act).

The key point of the bill is to prohibit discrimination in all areas of political, economic, social, and cultural life.

In the bill, 'discrimination' is defined as the act of separating, distinguishing, restricting, excluding, or treating unfavorably an individual or group in areas such as employment on the grounds of gender, disability, medical history, age, national origin, race, skin color, region of origin, appearance, genetic information, etc., without reasonable cause.

If a victim has suffered discrimination, the victim may file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission may issue a correction order if the person who received the recommendation for correction fails to implement the recommendation without justifiable grounds.

Corrective orders also allow enforcement fines to be imposed in case of non-compliance. In addition, if the issue is serious, a basis provision for supporting litigation of the case at the National Human Rights Commission level was also included.

The bill places the burden of proving that 'discrimination occurred' on the person who claims to have been discriminated against, while the burden of proving that 'there was no discrimination' is placed on the other party.

Legislation to this effect has previously been proposed several times under the name of the so-called 'Anti-Discrimination Act'. It is a bill that has not been enacted for nearly 19 years due to various controversies, such as opposition from religious groups and concerns about infringement on freedom of expression and reverse discrimination.

It all started with a legislative proposal released by the Ministry of Justice in October 2007.

The Ministry of Justice announced the enactment of an anti-discrimination bill that prohibits and prevents discriminatory acts in all areas, including politics, economy, society, and culture, but was met with opposition from the conservative religious community over standard items such as 'sexual orientation'.

Afterwards, ahead of major elections such as the presidential election, candidates from both the ruling and opposition parties were regularly asked to present their positions on these bills.

The need for legislation has been consistently raised, mainly by a small number of opposition parties, but the two major parties, concerned about the religious community's loss of votes, have taken cautious stances and have failed to overcome the legislative threshold.

Even in the country-by-country Periodic Human Rights Review (UPR) process, in which UN member states regularly check each other's human rights situation, it has often been pointed out that Korea has not legislated anti-discrimination laws.

In the 22nd National Assembly, anti-discrimination bills have already been proposed by the Progressive Party and the Fatherland Innovation Party.

As this is the first time that the ruling Democratic Party has proposed a bill in the 22nd National Assembly, attention is focused on whether the bill will pass the National Assembly for the first time in 19 years.