The National Human Rights Commission of Korea recommended for improvement of legislation and institutions related to employment, concluding that there is a need to supplement the system to reserve, return and destroy documents received from applicants during the employment process.
The NHRCK made a recommendation to the Minister of Employment and Labor to make an amendment to related legislations including the Act on Fair Employment Process, revise guidance and strengthen monitoring on disposal of documents, and devise and implement measures to encourage the state, local government and public institutions to conform to the rule to return to applicants the document that they submitted during the recruitment process.
A survey conducted in January 2016 showed that only half of the respondents returned the document that they received during the recruitment to applicants.
Moreover, the NHRCK analyzed 88 cases where documents were allowed to be submitted in a non-electronic way during the recruitment for non-public officials by the state, local government and public institutions, only 12.5% of them returned the document submitted.
In addition, even after all the recruitment stages are concluded, many institutions did not destroy the document and stored it for a long period of time. 27.3% of them destroyed the document within one month, 28.4% stored for more than two years or semi-permanently, and 36.4% unidentified.
The NHRCK concluded that as many institutions store applicants’ document for a long period of time and most of applicants are not aware of the purpose and period of storage of the document, there is a need to improve related legislation and systems including supplementing a guidance regarding when to destroy the application document.
