<Anchor>



We told you the story of this person, Mr. Park Young-geun, a year ago.

This is a worker with intellectual disabilities who dramatically escaped after being exploited for 7 years in a salt field in Shinan-gun, Jeollanam-do.

He sometimes worked while sleeping only an hour or two a day, but he had to suffer from violence and verbal abuse, let alone receive a decent salary.

After we reported that not only Park but also other people with disabilities were being exploited, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea investigated and confirmed that the officials who were supposed to protect them did not do their job properly.

The Human Rights Commission recommended that the Ministry of Labor, the ministry in charge, prepare guidelines so that people with disabilities are not discriminated against.



This is reporter Jung Ban-seok's exclusive report.



<Reporter>



Park Young-geun, an intellectually disabled person who escaped from a salt field in Shinan-gun, Jeollanam-do in 2021.



[Park Young-geun/Salt Farm Labor Victim (SBS 8 News, January 25, last year): Sleeping for 2 hours a day and sleeping for 1 hour, people should be able to withstand it.

I came out because there was no one to swim in the seawater, so it was an opportunity.

It just bounced off the mountain.]



Mr. Park also filed a petition for overdue wages, but the Mokpo branch of the Gwangju Regional Employment and Labor Administration closed the case as it was without investigating Mr. Park face-to-face.



Based on the 'withdrawal' text sent by Mr. Park, "I received wages and severance pay from the salt farm, and I do not want criminal punishment against the owner of the salt farm."



I did not properly examine whether Mr. Park was intellectually disabled.





The money that Mr. Park received for seven years of work was only 4 million won.



As a result of the reinvestigation, the unpaid wages were 87 million won.



The National Human Rights Commission of Korea said, "The Labor Administration was able to find out that the salt farm operator had been punished for imprisoning a disabled person and not paying wages in 2015." Violation of the Anti-Discrimination Act."



[Choi Jeong-gyu/Attorney (representative of salt farm victims): It was confirmed through this Human Rights Commission decision that the Ministry of Labor does not even have guidelines for determining whether salt farm victims are disabled.

Even after the salt farm slavery incident in 2014, the labor office has not changed at all...

.]



The Human Rights Commission then recommended that the Labor Office make guidelines for the investigation of the disabled and conduct training on remedies for workers in salt farms.



(Video coverage: Yoo Dong-hyeok, video editing: Lee Seung-hee, CG: Jeon Yu-geun)