Korea employment agency to unveil first panel study on disability employment

The Employment Development Institute at the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities said Monday it will present the first research results from a newly built disability employment panel at its 18th academic conference on Nov. 6.

The conference will be held at 1 p.m. in the council chamber of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It will be the first public airing of findings drawn from the third cohort of the panel, which was built in 2025 to focus specifically on policy questions.

The session's planned theme is an analysis of how effective national employment services for disabled people are from the perspective of disabled people themselves, and it is intended to examine both the results and the remaining tasks of disability employment policy. Kim Do-heon, an associate research fellow at the Korea Development Institute, Oh Uk-chan, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, and Lim Ye-jik, a research fellow at the host institute, are among the specialists scheduled to present and discuss the results.

Before the main session, Na Young-don, a distinguished chair professor specializing in artificial intelligence at Korea Polytechnic University, will deliver a keynote lecture on innovation in data and AI and its implications for disability employment, examining the changes the spread of data and AI technologies will bring to the labor market and the direction disability employment should take.

The institute holds the conference annually to raise the use of four nationally approved sets of disability employment statistics and to feed the design of disability employment policy.

"Each number contains the lives and choices of disabled people themselves, and the changes our policies have produced," Lee Dong-young, the institute's director, said. "I hope this conference becomes a place that connects research, the field and policy, and an opportunity to discuss in depth the direction disability policy should take."

Details of the conference are available in the notice section of the agency's website, and those who wish to attend can register in advance through a QR code or link on the event poster.