By Kim Tae-jong

South Korea still discriminates against minorities and foreigners, the U.S. State Department said in its 2010 country report on human rights.

Citing a National Human Rights Commission report, the U.S. human rights report said there were six cases of alleged discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons last year. 

“There are no specific laws punishing or providing compensation to victims of discrimination or violence against LGBT persons,” it said. “Societal discrimination against LGBT persons have persisted.”

In June the Constitutional Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of the military code of conduct prohibiting consensual homosexual relationships between military personnel. 

At the year’s end the court had not issued a ruling, it said.

“Some observers claimed that persons with HIV/AIDS suffered from societal discrimination and a social stigma,” the report said. 

The country has long prided itself on its racial homogeneity, but its growing ethnic minority population passed the 1.2 million mark midway through last year.

In cases of discrimination against ethnic minorities, it cited an incident where a man with a mental disability killed his foreign bride, which later led to a swift government crackdown on illegal matchmaking agencies. 

It also said North Korean refugees, although supported by government-funded resettlement programs, “faced discrimination.” 

Restrictions on Internet

It said that there were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, but considered 35 suicides among military personnel as a problem.

It said that 13 of them were allegedly caused by hazing, mistreatment, or an inability to adjust to military life in the first six month of service. 

Regarding freedom of speech and the press, the country received a favorable evaluation in the report. 

“The law provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice,” the report said. 

It added that an independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to ensure freedom of speech and of the press. 

But it said, “there were some government restrictions on access to the Internet and reports that the government monitored e-mail and Internet chat rooms.”

The government blocked violent, sexually explicit, and gambling-oriented websites and required operators to rate their site as harmful or not to youth, based on telecommunications laws that ban Internet service providers from offering information to young age groups, the report said. 

Meanwhile it denounced North Korean leader Kim Jong-il for ruling the reclusive communist state under an absolute dictatorship replete with extrajudicial killings and prison camps.

North Korea is “a dictatorship under the absolute rule of Kim Jong-il, general secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission,” the report said.