Bigger budget needed to improve access for disabled
It is a citizen's right to use public transportation. Every Seoulite should be able to use the Seoul subway.
On Monday, however, Seoul Metro and the police joined forces to block the disabled from taking the subway. It was unprecedented that citizens were denied access to the subway.
Stressing the need to "move on schedule" and putting forth a "zero-tolerance" principle, Mayor Oh Se-hoon kept a group of disability rights activists from staging a subway-riding protest during the morning rush hour. It was a pathetic excuse. Punctuality cannot come ahead of human rights.
Since late 2021, the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) has been staging subway-riding protests at major transfer stations in central Seoul. Most commuters did not complain, calling or texting their bosses to say they would be late due to SADD. Of course, some complainants were taking issue with the group's "method of demonstrating that harms others."
For instance, a young woman told demonstrators, "You live off our taxes. Still, you made me 20 minutes late for work." She should have known the protesters have struggled to secure their mobility rights for more than 20 years. A middle-aged man was more direct, saying, "Are you proud of being disabled?" Such cruel reactions even forced other disabled groups to call for SADD to stop its campaigns.
However, no right is earned for nothing.
In 2016, a wheelchair user tried to ride an express bus. The bus company told him to put the wheelchair in the luggage department and go up the stairs. It prompted several such people to protest the infringement on their mobility rights. Finally, someone filed a lawsuit against the bus operator. The company lost, paying about 3 billion won ($2.3 million) to 2,100 wheelchair users. Who filed the lawsuit? No, it was not some disabled group but the Ministry of Justice.
Another anecdote shows how disabled Americans earned their mobility right in a fight against Greyhound after they first stopped the bus in the 1980s. The U.S. Department of Justice stepped in because the company violated a federal law, the American Disabilities Act, implemented in 1991.
Likewise, physically challenged people in the U.K. blocked bus operations in London with wheelchairs. In the 1970s, their Japanese counterparts occupied buses, roads and public bathrooms, saying they rejected the "civilization of the non-disabled."
Korea has a similar law ― the Disability Discrimination Act legislated in 2007. However, the justice ministry has never filed a suit against anyone for violating it. A dispute usually ends with a recommendation by the state human rights agency and a court order for mediation. The government is very passive in resolving discrimination against disabled people compared to advanced countries.
A Seoul court intervened in the Seoul subway case, suggesting allowing five minutes for SADD. The group accepted it, promising to pay a 5 million won fine if it exceeded the time. The mayor rejected it. "It is preposterous to delay the metro's operation by five minutes," he said. "One-minute's delay is unthinkable."
The politician from the conservative governing party then mobilized 600 riot police to block the tube-riding protest, jamming the narrow subway station and risking injuring commuters and protestors. We can't help but wonder where all those riot police were when at least 158 youngsters died in a crowd crush disaster in Itaewon in October.
The right to move is the right to work ― and live. Commuters should direct their complaints about being late to the Seoul mayor or the finance ministry, which reflected only 0.8 percent of the requested spending by SADD in the 2023 budget. A society's dignity is determined by how it treats its most vulnerable people.
A good government does not divide its citizens into the disabled and non-disabled, but helps everyone to understand and respect each other.
President Yoon Suk-yeol should tell his budgeters to allocate the entire amount. He must figure out why the group is holding protests at Samgakji Station, near where his office is located.
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