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Discrimination based on disabilities in insurance purchasing [2008] KRNHRC 3 (1 January 2008)

The complainant, who had a third-class mental disability, claimed that a Post Office
rejected to sell an insurance product to the complainant because the complainant had a
mental disability.

After an investigation, the Commission found that the Korean Post Office did not
review the disability of the complainant and the accident rate of the complainant, and
simply rejected to sell a personal accident insurance product to the complainant only
because the complainant had a mental disability and medical history of psychiatric
treatment.

Articles 15 and 17 of the Disability Discrimination Act stipulate that financial product or
service providers shall not limit, exclude, differentiate, or reject people with disabilities in
offering financial products and services including insurance products, without reasonable
causes. Therefore, the Commission concluded that the Korean Post Office violated Article
17 of the Disability Discrimination Act by refusing to sell an insurance product on the
grounds of disabilities, even though there was no reasonable evidence on the correlation
between the disability of the complainant and the accident rate. The Commission
recommended that the respondent conduct an examination of the insurance application
policies and develop more specific standards regarding the interpretation and application of
the phrase 'mentally feeble and or mentally deficient", so as to prevent recurrences of
similar discriminatory incidents until Article 732 of the Commercial Law Act is abolished.
This was the first recommendation that the Commission in which it applied the Disability
Discrimination Act since the Disability Discrimination Act took effect.