Sex offenders are removed from jobs that involve kids

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said Wednesday that 131 sex offenders were working at child-related facilities.

The ministry said a thorough review conducted from July to September on 1.93 million people from 305,078 educational, sports, game and medical entities found that 131 employees at 132 workplaces were unfit to work there due to child safety concerns.

Among the 131 sex criminals, 71 were dismissed from their workplaces, 43 were ordered to close down their facilities and 17 were replaced, the ministry said.

Sports-related facilities were found to have hired the biggest number of sex offenders, 45 people, or 34.4 percent, followed by private education facilities with 26 people, or 19.9 percent, then game-related facilities with 21 people, or 16 percent of the total.

In 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled the law that imposed an employment restriction of 10 years on sex offenders regardless of their crimes was too excessive and thus unconstitutional. Following the ruling, some offenders were able to get jobs at such institutions. But on July 17, a revised law took effect that put the restriction back into effect.

The ministry makes public the central and provincial governments’ reviews of sex offender employment statuses and workplaces on a special website dedicated to the issue, www.sexoffender.go.kr, for at least three months.

“The ministry’s measures against sex offenders who were able to work at child-related facilities helped resolve parents’ anxiety. We will make sure the employment restriction measure takes root smoothly,” said Choi Chang-haeng, director general of the ministry’s women’s and youth rights promotion bureau.

Yonhap