South Korea's disabled fight to be seen after decades of being denied basic rights

In Seoul's notoriously packed underground at peak travel time on a Monday morning, commuters look surprised as wheelchair-users try to gain access.

With the help of police and subway authorities, who put down a ramp for the wheelchairs, South Korean activists are continuing their fight for equal treatment for people with disabilities.

The Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) and other groups have been protesting on Seoul's undergrounds during peak morning commutes since early December, in what they say is a decades-long fight. Some activists get out of their wheelchairs and crawl inside trains, while others prevent them from departing by jamming the doors open with their wheelchairs.

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On this particular Monday morning, Joo Jung-soo, the head of Dong-Seoul Centre for Independent Living, joins his fellow activists as they shave their heads in a show of protest. The government had failed "to provide basic rights during my 67 years living as a disabled person", he said.

The number of institutions provided for the disabled has increased over the years, but their quality has not. According to data from the health ministry last year, more than 50 per cent of disabled people living in residential facilities died before reaching the age of 50 while 32 per cent died in their 20s or 30s.

Abuse is another pressing issue within these facilities as many abuse cases are settled by correction orders, often there is no retribution at all. According to a 2019 report from the health and welfare ministry, two in 10 cases of abuse against the disabled came from workers at residential facilities for the disabled.

Those who leave the facilities often cannot find suitable accommodation because there are too few adequate, affordable homes for the disabled to live independently. Those who are given housing by the government find it has not been adapted for people with disabilities.

For example, last year a man paralysed in both legs who had difficulty getting to the toilet, died from blood poisoning caused by a bedsore. According to a report in the Chosun newspaper, the bathroom was too small for his wheelchair and the toilet was regular-sized and inadequate for his needs.

When it comes to access to education for disabled people, activists say there is a need for comprehensive changes to the quality of education and are calling for management and funding to be transitioned from regional to national level. While more than 80 per cent of South Koreans enrol in college, only 14.4 per cent of the country's disabled were college-educated in 2020, according to the health and welfare ministry.

Bills on transport have been revisited over the years with 90 per cent of Seoul's subway stations now having lifts accessible to the disabled. But only city and rural buses are required to become wheelchair-accessible, while intercity buses are not. Neither are taxis required to be accessible to the disabled.

According to a 2020 survey by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, among the 32 per cent of disabled Koreans who said they didn't have access to a hospital or clinic, 30 per cent cited transport as the reason.

Disability activists are also supporting the hotly debated anti-discrimination law to be passed because, as with other minorities in South Korea, discrimination against people with disabilities is legal.

There has been backlash from the public and politicians. President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's right-hand man and the head of the conservative People's Power Party, Lee Jun-seok, accused activists of "playing the minority card" and using an "uncivilised and backward strategy" to have their voices heard. Complaints and angry messages have flooded SADD's phone lines.

Moon Kyung-hee, another activist in a wheelchair next to Joo, said: "We are also citizens, but why is it that we can't be seen?"

Moon is talking figuratively, but her words can also be taken literally. Not only is it rare to spot someone in a wheelchair getting on the subway or the bus, it's hard to find a disabled person anywhere in public in Seoul.

"If you want to go to the market or to a restaurant, there are almost always upwards slopes," she said.

"A lot of public facilities have changed, but it's still really difficult to go to places if you are disabled in this country. That's why you see fewer of us outside."

More than 2.6 million, or 5 per cent, of South Korea's population, are registered as having a disability. The real number may be higher because not all disabled have registered.

Joo says he has faced discrimination throughout his life but kept quiet about it until he retired. Working at a factory making fountain pens, he says he received a lower salary than other workers and had difficulty using the stairs in his workplace. He used crutches and only got a wheelchair three years ago.

"Most of the discrimination was not seen by the eyes but felt in the heart," he says. "It was because of my family that I didn't say a word."

Joo attended a regular school rather than a special-needs school like many other people with disabilities in the country and he is not in favour of them.

"This separation between disabled students and the rest will only make the gap widen," he says. "Disabled or not, everyone should share the same classroom so that people get used to seeing disabled people and become friends with them."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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