By Kim Solar-ae
Not too long ago I learn “Rush-hour Subway” by Park Kyoung-seok, a consultant of Solidarity In opposition to Incapacity Discrimination. The e-book taught me the historical past of protests for the rights of individuals with disabilities.
In Korea, protests for disabled individuals’s mobility rights started in 2001. It was troublesome for the scholars of the Nodeul Faculty for the Disabled to go to high school as a result of a scarcity of elevators at subway stations and low-floor buses. Folks with disabilities have been injured or died falling from wheelchair lifts at subway stations. So the scholars and lecturers of the varsity began combating for the mobility rights of the disabled.
In 2002, a disabled individual died in a fall utilizing a wheelchair raise at Balsan Station. Park and different activists went on a starvation strike towards the Seoul Metropolitan Authorities, calling for putting in elevators at subway stations and for introducing low-floor buses that wheelchair customers can take. The Seoul Metropolitan Authorities lastly accepted the demand.
Nevertheless, not all subway stations within the metropolis have elevators but, even after over 20 years have handed. At stations with out elevators, disabled individuals nonetheless have to make use of a wheelchair raise with a danger of falling accidents.
Low-floor buses are nonetheless inadequate too. Seoul’s introduction price of those buses is about 63 %, though the town has the very best introduction price of them in Korea. In Incheon, low-floor buses account for under 16 %.
If individuals with disabilities can not go to high school and be educated as a result of they’re disadvantaged of mobility rights, how can they work? The very best degree of education of about 38 % of the disabled remains to be elementary college or decrease. Though Korea has a excessive literacy price, many individuals with disabilities didn’t have a possibility to obtain literacy schooling.
Consequently, about 62 % of the nation’s disabled persons are economically inactive, whereas roughly 35 % of the full inhabitants is economically inactive. Notably, the labor pressure participation price of disabled ladies is just about 24 %, whereas that of disabled males is roughly 48 %.
Article 11 of Korea’s Structure says, “All residents shall be equal earlier than regulation.” All of us, together with individuals with disabilities, have a proper to not be discriminated simply due to distinction. To remove discrimination towards the disabled, it’s needed to extend the finances for them. At present, Korea’s finances for them is just one-third of the OECD common.
After disabled individuals’s protests for mobility rights, elevators have been added to subway stations and low-floor buses have been adopted. These modifications have benefited varied individuals together with older adults. To ensure mobility rights is nice for the entire neighborhood together with individuals pushing a stroller, sufferers and older adults.
Solely when individuals with disabilities can transfer freely, can they examine, work and construct a significant relationship with different individuals, thereby residing a life worthy of human dignity. Guaranteeing mobility rights is the start line for guaranteeing different primary human rights.
Kim Solar-ae (weblog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote “Outdated Potato, New Potato” and translated “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”