The National Human Rights Commission of Korea(Chairperson Lee Sungho) concluded that setting the age-limit in selecting the guide for culture tour and excluding people aged 70 and above is a discrimination without reasonable ground and recommended to the Mayor of the city to not to have a age-limit in employing the guide for culture tour.
The competent city, based on the Tourism Promotion Act, carried out pre-announcement of legislation of the city ordinance for promotion of tourism which prescribed operation of culture tour guide to develop local economy and tourism industry through hosting tourist from both home and abroad. The ordinance prescribes that applicant for the culture tour guide has to be younger than 70 years old.
The competent city government said that setting an age-limit in selecting tour guide is necessary to protect health of the guide because guiding is an energy-consuming activities and the tourist prefer younger guides.
However, the Commission concluded that for the purpose of protecting health of guides, reasonable standards such as medical diagnosis or fitness checkup can be utilized rather than setting the age-limit.
In addition, it is hard to see reasonable ground for the claim that tourist prefer younger guide, and the Commission believes that aged guide rather has advantage as they may have more abundant experience on the history and culture of the region.
The Commission believes that it is not desirable to limit activities of the elderly solely based on their age without reasonable ground and it plans to continue to make effort to address such discrimination.
