Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Blind students' parents take to street
Parents of students at Seoul National School for the Blind hold a silent vigil near Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Saturday, in protest of prolonged and careless rallies being staged in the area which they claim infringe on the students' right to learn due to noise and traffic control. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
Parents claim ceaseless protests infringe on students' right to learn
By Bahk Eun-ji
Parents of visually challenged students were up in arms over ceaseless protests around Cheong Wa Dae, which is close to a special school for the students, saying the loud rallies infringe on the children's right to learn.
Members of the Korea Blind Family Association and the parents' group of the Seoul National School for the Blind held a silent vigil near the presidential office, Saturday, to urge people to refrain from holding demonstrations there.
The school is about 500 meters from Cheong Wa Dae Sarangchae, a tourist center just next to the presidential office, where various interest groups stage protests with loudspeakers almost every day.
Students of the school have a regular class to learn how to walk to a destination alone by learning about their surroundings through listening. But the noise from rallies and traffic control disrupts the lessons, the parents said.
“Families of blind people are furious that the children's mobility is interrupted and their right to learn is being infringed on. For the protesters, it might be just one day of participation in the rallies, but we have to deal with them every day,” Kim Kyung-sook, the head of the parents' group, said during the vigil.
“The protesters do not care about the welfare of the disabled and the problems of the socially disadvantaged in favor of their own interest.”
The parents' association had already filed petitions with the police several times, asking for protests to be banned, especially rallies by a conservative group called the “Pan-National Alliance for Moon Jae-in's Resignation” which has long staged protests there, demanding the resignation of President Moon and his administration.
In response to the petitions, the Jongno Police Station ordered the conservative group to stop holding rallies from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m.
The parents have requested talks with the group a number of times, and had two meetings to appeal their struggles, but their requests were simply ignored, Kim said.
“They told us that our children's safety is certainly not that important in this situation which they called a state of emergency,” Kim said.
“We are not saying protests should be banned entirely or specific political groups' opinions are right or wrong. We are staging the vigil today because multiple requests were to no avail even though we have tried our best to settle this dispute peacefully,” Kang Bok-soon, another member of the parents' group, said during a rally.
On Saturday as well while the parents were staging the vigil, several protests took place nearby. Members of a conservative group, which could not march toward Cheong Wa Dae due to the parents' vigil, told the parents not to infringe on their right to protest as guaranteed by the Constitution.