Man in wheelchair awarded for helping 527 people with disabilities find jobs

Kim Chang-hoon, a senior official at the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities / Courtesy of the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities

Bias against people with disabilities persists

By Ko Dong-hwan

A man who has been helping fellow people with disabilities find employment was honored with the country's “Person with Disability of the Year” award on April 20, the National Day of People with Disabilities in Korea.

Kim Chang-hoon, a senior official at the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities, received the presidential award on Wednesday. During the 21 years since he started working at the state-run organization in 2000, Kim has helped 527 people with disabilities get hired ― 338 of whom were significantly handicapped. Among those who found employment, 115 were hired by large private companies and 96 by state-run firms.

The 26th annual award also acknowledged that Kim contributed to financially supporting disabled workers so that they could continue working over the long term, as well as developing and improving their vocational skills.

“I got lots of love from my family members and friends,” Kim said. “Thanks to their support, I had the dream of becoming a rehabilitation expert for people with disabilities. I want people with disabilities to have their own dreams and make those dreams come true just like I did. I will keep doing my best in my profession to realize an ideal society for people with disabilities.”

Kim, 45, gets around by wheelchair because he has progressive muscular dystrophy, a rare disease that weakens the muscles gradually and is difficult to treat. He developed the disease when he was three years old. He has been categorized as having a first-class physical disability ― the most serious ― by Korea's standards for people with disabilities.

Because of his disability, as a teenager he couldn't attend school without the help of his mother, teachers and friends. When he entered university, he and his mother moved closer to the school in order for him to get to class more easily. Apart from that, he also had to endure the country's underdeveloped infrastructure that was inadequate for people with disabilities, as well as society's biases and prejudices against them.

People with disabilities and those advocating for them hold a protest in front of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's headquarters at the Government Complex in Sejong, April 19, demanding that the central government repeal discriminatory policies against people with disabilities. Yonhap

Kim eventually graduated from university with a degree in human rehabilitation. After that, he earned licenses to become a social worker, a vocational consultant and a lecturer to raise public awareness of people with disabilities.

Since getting hired by Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities, he has worked tirelessly to achieve social acceptance of disabled people as regular workers.

Social barriers still exist

Despite Kim's efforts and now recognition through the award, Korea is divided on ― and far behind major advanced countries in ― the protection of the rights of people with disabilities.

A group of people with physical disabilities from across the country has been demanding since last month that the presidential transition committee and the incoming administration of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol invest more in improving public spaces and public transportation to be fully accessible to the disabled.

One of their methods of protest ― occupying a section of the subway platform in several metro stations in Seoul during morning rush hour ― aroused complaints from some non-disabled people. The main opposition conservative People Power Party Chairman Rep. Lee Jun-seok came under fire for his open criticism of the group. He said the group had been “holding morning commuters hostage” due to their daily protests and called them “uncivilized.” The politician's comments led to an uproar among other members of the public and the group, which called for Lee to “stop dividing the country from people with disabilities.”

The protesters suspended their occupying of subway platforms late last month, and instead will continue raising public awareness of the country's insufficient awareness of disability rights. In addition, they began shaving their heads on a subway platform inside Gyeongbokgung Station on Seoul Metro Line 3. Fourteen people shaved their heads until April 18 in order to express the urgent need for the incoming Yoon administration to acknowledge and protect their mobility rights.

Park Gyeong-suk, left, who represents a group of people with disabilities in the country, meets the former chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, Song Young-gil, as the group protests the presidential transition committee in order to safeguard their mobility rights, in Yeouido, Seoul, April 20. Yonhap

On Tuesday morning, the group's leader, Park Gyeong-suk, who also uses a wheelchair, held a rare press conference to advocate for the improvement of conditions for disabled people. During his appearance, he intentionally jammed his wheelchair's wheel between a subway train and the platform of Dongguk University Station on Seoul Metro Line 3, keeping the subway door open and delaying the train for 10 minutes.

“It's not about us deliberately sticking our wheelchairs between the subway train and the platform. It's about how people with disabilities' wheelchairs ― or their legs ― can get stuck here and accidentally put them in danger,” Park said. He also said that he had decided to join the action to “show Rep. Lee how a person who is wheelchair-bound can easily get into a dangerous situation inside a metro station.”

Park said that his group will wait until the end of Wednesday for the presidential transition committee's response to their demands. If they don't respond, he said his group will organize larger-scale public protests.

On Wednesday, President Moon Jae-in said on Facebook, “We (as a society) must blame ourselves for our own indifference and for not being more considerate of the mobility rights of disabled people.” Writing in commemoration of Korea's 42nd National Day of People with Disabilities, he continued, “A world without discrimination, transcending prejudice, is the path we should all walk together.”

Moon added that the pace of each person ― disabled and non-disabled ― going through life and reaching their prime is different. “We need to build a world where we can wait for the slow,” he said.