Rights watchdog advises addition of transgender data to national statistics

Participants at a press conference organized by LGBTQ activists stand in front of Seoul City Hall, in this file photo. The state human rights watchdog recommended Monday that the government include transgender-related data. Yonhap

The state human rights watchdog has recommended that the government include transgender-related data when compiling national statistics so as to better understand such citizens' situation and draw up government policy for them, officials said Monday.

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) made the recommendation to the health, interior and gender ministries as well as Statistics Korea, while asking the prime minister to come up with such a guideline on the issue.

"Transgender people experience discrimination and hatred based on prejudice in their everyday lives but are not studied in various government surveys or considered as a population group subject to policymaking," the watchdog said.

According to the watchdog's 2020 survey, more than 65 percent of transgender people said they suffered discrimination or hate speech because of their sexual identity in the past year.

Over 57 percent were found to have been diagnosed or treated for depression in 2019.

The NHRCK also called upon Statistics Korea to delete transsexualism from the list of mental illnesses in the Korean Standard Classification of Diseases, saying it strengthens social prejudice and the labeling effect against transgender people.

The World Health Organization and some countries have excluded transsexualism from their official list of mental diseases, according to the NHRCK. (Yonhap)

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