At the time, an interviewer had asked a female applicant whether she was married and if she had ever been in a romantic relationship. He also wanted to know the duration of her longest serious relationship.

The female applicant, who wished to remain unnamed, filed the case to the Seoul City Human Rights Center arguing the questions she received were irrelevant to her abilities.

Lee Yoon-sang, one of the three human rights ombudsmen and independent investigators hired by the city of Seoul, acknowledged the case as a violation to her rights, and said, “Multiple guidelines make it a principle for interviewers to refrain from asking questions that might lead to discriminations.”

“Regardless of the evaluator’s intended objective, questions regarding an applicant’s marriage status may trigger other evaluators to make biased decisions against married women, as well as disconcert the applicant with matters unrelated to the job,” Lee said.

Lee stressed the need for a more scrupulous mechanism to guarantee fair evaluation, and asked Seoul to implement an educational program for its human resources directors.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)