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omonatheydidBy the time Lee Hye Gyeong was diagnosed with glaucoma in 2005, she had already lost much of her vision. And now, the former shop assistant sees only shapeless colors as she fumbles through Seoul's crowded subway.
Still, for the past year and a half, this commute has been part of her daily routine: she gets up at 5:30 a.m., cooks breakfast for her husband and two teenage sons and then takes the subway to a government-run school. There, Lee, 42, trains for the one job - masseur - that South Korea has for most of the past century reserved exclusively for the visually impaired.
But lately she fears her prospects in this new profession are under threat.
The South Korean Constitutional Court is being asked to strike down the law that allows only the visually impaired to become professional masseurs, on the grounds that it violates the employment rights of the non-blind. Lawyers say a ruling could come as soon as next week.
Feelings on both sides are intense. Three people have already died in protests over who may enter the trade.
Lee is distraught at the possibility the law might change. "Massage is the only job we blind can do," she said. "In the name of free competition, they are trying to take away our right to survive."
The monopoly for blind masseurs was introduced in Korea by Japanese colonialists in 1913. It was abolished in 1946 by the postwar U.S. military government but reinstated in 1963. In a country where social prejudice and a lack of official support long restricted the opportunities of the disabled, the visually impaired have fiercely defended their exclusive right to the business.
The 7,100 blind people working in about 1,000 massage parlors are the only legally registered masseurs in South Korea. But they hardly meet the demand for massages. So tens of thousands of "sports massage" centers, skin-care salons, barber shops, hotels and public bath houses all hire sighted - and technically illegal - massage workers. Estimates of their number range from 150,000 to 700,000.
National sport teams also hire sighted massage therapists. During the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and the World Cup soccer tournament in 2002, South Korea assigned hundreds of sighted masseurs to cater to the visiting delegations. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the government offered free massage training to the unemployed. Roh Moo Hyun, the former president, is said to have kept his own - sighted - masseur.
"Every bride gets a full-body massage before her wedding, nearly always from unlicensed masseurs," said Park Yoon Soo, 63, president of the Massager Association of Korea, which is leading the legal challenge to the massage law. "This shows how absurd the law is."
Park's association represents 120,000 unlicensed masseurs. Its members are working openly, in defiance of the law, which calls for up to three years in prison for an unlicensed practitioner. Park's office keeps a growing file of members indicted and fined from 500,000 won to 5 million won, or $450 to $4,500.
"It breaks my heart when I think that what I am doing every day, what I consider my calling, is a crime," said Park, whose strong fingers have kneaded the backs of numerous politicians and celebrities over the past 25 years. "We are not trying to steal jobs from the blind, we just want to share the market. We want to live as normal citizens, not as criminals."
The South Korean Constitution guarantees its people the freedom to choose jobs, but it also stipulates that the state protect its disabled.
The two principles clashed in 2003, when sighted massage workers asked the Constitutional Court to invalidate the government's directive that only the blind could work as masseurs. In that case, the court came down on the side of the blind.
But in 2006, a reconstituted court issued a ruling that favored the sighted, saying that restricting people's choice of jobs by government directive - it was not then a formal law - was "excessively" discriminatory.
That triggered weeks of protests by the blind. Blind masseurs leaped from tall buildings and onto subway tracks. Two died. The police fished blind activists from the Han River in Seoul after they jumped from a bridge to highlight their cause. The protests continued until the National Assembly passed legislation enshrining the blind massage monopoly in law.
The sighted staged their own protests. After the National Assembly's action in 2006, one activist killed himself by jumping from the same Han River bridge. More than 7,300 sighted masseurs have joined in another lawsuit, this time asking the Constitutional Court to strike down the new law.
And this month, blind protesters again jumped from the bridge, this time in opposition to a government proposal to license skin-care specialists to give massages. The protesters demanded that the skin-care specialists' massages be confined to head and hands, leaving the rest of the body to the blind.
Conditions for the disabled in South Korea have generally improved in recent years. Subways and buildings have begun improving access to the handicapped, and the government now provides tax cuts for businesses that hire the disabled.
But the disabled say much remains to be done. Few buses are equipped to board people who use wheelchairs, and many people who use canes or wheelchairs complain that taxis won't stop for them.
Some of the blind sense a persistent social stigma.
"Many of us don't go to our children's graduation ceremonies for fear they might be ashamed of us," said Lee Gyu Song, secretary general of the organization representing blind masseurs, the Korea Masseurs Association.
On a recent day, Dong Seong Geun, 45, a blind masseur, was staging a lone protest in front of the Constitutional Court, holding a sign.
"I have a wife and two children to support," he said. "If I lose this job, I will have to beg on the streets. How can taking away one job from people who only have one compare with taking one job away from sighted people who have a hundred jobs to choose from?"
State-financed schools for the visually impaired used to train their students to become piano tuners, telephone operators and stenographers. But when it was discovered that most graduates could not compete with the sighted, the schools narrowed their training to massage, said Yang Hoi Song, the head of vocational training at the Seoul National School for the Blind.
Lee, the leader of the blind masseurs, said competing with sighted massage therapists in South Korea would be like "going into a boxing ring with your eyes blindfolded." His group has demanded greater government assistance to train more of the country's 210,000 visually impaired to become masseurs.
The sighted masseurs, for their part, argue that the massage law is holding the blind back, by confining them to a vocational ghetto.
"What blind people must realize is that by clinging to the one benefit the government tossed their way, they are actually impeding their own welfare," said Kim Myong Bo, 55, a sighted masseur.
"No matter what the Constitutional Court says, I'm staying in this work," Kim said. "When I give my customers a message and their faces light up like a full moon, I'm a proud and happy man."
Lee Hye Gyeong, the woman with glaucoma who will finish her massage training course next spring, said although she cannot see her customers' facial expressions, giving a massage is more a matter of survival than of pride.
"I ask those sighted masseurs to close their eyes for a while and imagine being blind and try to imagine what they can do," she said. "Then they will understand our predicament."
source: New York Times
Both sides of the argument have interesting arguments.
Still, for the past year and a half, this commute has been part of her daily routine: she gets up at 5:30 a.m., cooks breakfast for her husband and two teenage sons and then takes the subway to a government-run school. There, Lee, 42, trains for the one job - masseur - that South Korea has for most of the past century reserved exclusively for the visually impaired.
But lately she fears her prospects in this new profession are under threat.
The South Korean Constitutional Court is being asked to strike down the law that allows only the visually impaired to become professional masseurs, on the grounds that it violates the employment rights of the non-blind. Lawyers say a ruling could come as soon as next week.
Feelings on both sides are intense. Three people have already died in protests over who may enter the trade.
Lee is distraught at the possibility the law might change. "Massage is the only job we blind can do," she said. "In the name of free competition, they are trying to take away our right to survive."
The monopoly for blind masseurs was introduced in Korea by Japanese colonialists in 1913. It was abolished in 1946 by the postwar U.S. military government but reinstated in 1963. In a country where social prejudice and a lack of official support long restricted the opportunities of the disabled, the visually impaired have fiercely defended their exclusive right to the business.
The 7,100 blind people working in about 1,000 massage parlors are the only legally registered masseurs in South Korea. But they hardly meet the demand for massages. So tens of thousands of "sports massage" centers, skin-care salons, barber shops, hotels and public bath houses all hire sighted - and technically illegal - massage workers. Estimates of their number range from 150,000 to 700,000.
National sport teams also hire sighted massage therapists. During the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and the World Cup soccer tournament in 2002, South Korea assigned hundreds of sighted masseurs to cater to the visiting delegations. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the government offered free massage training to the unemployed. Roh Moo Hyun, the former president, is said to have kept his own - sighted - masseur.
"Every bride gets a full-body massage before her wedding, nearly always from unlicensed masseurs," said Park Yoon Soo, 63, president of the Massager Association of Korea, which is leading the legal challenge to the massage law. "This shows how absurd the law is."
Park's association represents 120,000 unlicensed masseurs. Its members are working openly, in defiance of the law, which calls for up to three years in prison for an unlicensed practitioner. Park's office keeps a growing file of members indicted and fined from 500,000 won to 5 million won, or $450 to $4,500.
"It breaks my heart when I think that what I am doing every day, what I consider my calling, is a crime," said Park, whose strong fingers have kneaded the backs of numerous politicians and celebrities over the past 25 years. "We are not trying to steal jobs from the blind, we just want to share the market. We want to live as normal citizens, not as criminals."
The South Korean Constitution guarantees its people the freedom to choose jobs, but it also stipulates that the state protect its disabled.
The two principles clashed in 2003, when sighted massage workers asked the Constitutional Court to invalidate the government's directive that only the blind could work as masseurs. In that case, the court came down on the side of the blind.
But in 2006, a reconstituted court issued a ruling that favored the sighted, saying that restricting people's choice of jobs by government directive - it was not then a formal law - was "excessively" discriminatory.
That triggered weeks of protests by the blind. Blind masseurs leaped from tall buildings and onto subway tracks. Two died. The police fished blind activists from the Han River in Seoul after they jumped from a bridge to highlight their cause. The protests continued until the National Assembly passed legislation enshrining the blind massage monopoly in law.
The sighted staged their own protests. After the National Assembly's action in 2006, one activist killed himself by jumping from the same Han River bridge. More than 7,300 sighted masseurs have joined in another lawsuit, this time asking the Constitutional Court to strike down the new law.
And this month, blind protesters again jumped from the bridge, this time in opposition to a government proposal to license skin-care specialists to give massages. The protesters demanded that the skin-care specialists' massages be confined to head and hands, leaving the rest of the body to the blind.
Conditions for the disabled in South Korea have generally improved in recent years. Subways and buildings have begun improving access to the handicapped, and the government now provides tax cuts for businesses that hire the disabled.
But the disabled say much remains to be done. Few buses are equipped to board people who use wheelchairs, and many people who use canes or wheelchairs complain that taxis won't stop for them.
Some of the blind sense a persistent social stigma.
"Many of us don't go to our children's graduation ceremonies for fear they might be ashamed of us," said Lee Gyu Song, secretary general of the organization representing blind masseurs, the Korea Masseurs Association.
On a recent day, Dong Seong Geun, 45, a blind masseur, was staging a lone protest in front of the Constitutional Court, holding a sign.
"I have a wife and two children to support," he said. "If I lose this job, I will have to beg on the streets. How can taking away one job from people who only have one compare with taking one job away from sighted people who have a hundred jobs to choose from?"
State-financed schools for the visually impaired used to train their students to become piano tuners, telephone operators and stenographers. But when it was discovered that most graduates could not compete with the sighted, the schools narrowed their training to massage, said Yang Hoi Song, the head of vocational training at the Seoul National School for the Blind.
Lee, the leader of the blind masseurs, said competing with sighted massage therapists in South Korea would be like "going into a boxing ring with your eyes blindfolded." His group has demanded greater government assistance to train more of the country's 210,000 visually impaired to become masseurs.
The sighted masseurs, for their part, argue that the massage law is holding the blind back, by confining them to a vocational ghetto.
"What blind people must realize is that by clinging to the one benefit the government tossed their way, they are actually impeding their own welfare," said Kim Myong Bo, 55, a sighted masseur.
"No matter what the Constitutional Court says, I'm staying in this work," Kim said. "When I give my customers a message and their faces light up like a full moon, I'm a proud and happy man."
Lee Hye Gyeong, the woman with glaucoma who will finish her massage training course next spring, said although she cannot see her customers' facial expressions, giving a massage is more a matter of survival than of pride.
"I ask those sighted masseurs to close their eyes for a while and imagine being blind and try to imagine what they can do," she said. "Then they will understand our predicament."
source: New York Times
Both sides of the argument have interesting arguments.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 06:10 am (UTC)When that is THE ONLY OPPORTUNITY YOU HAVE outside of begging on the streets since nobody will hire you because "omg BLIND!" you're going to cling to that with all you have.
I don't see South Korea (or America, or most of the industrialized world, for that matter, (and this includes you, too, Canada) giving REAL, ACTUAL job opportunities for disabled individuals outside of McJobs or "oh hay let's fulfill our ~*~diversity~*~ requirement" in which they're allowed to pay disabled workers below minimum wage under the aegis that disabled people are "working" and that the government will "make up the rest along with their families because FOR SHAME SOMEONE WILL HAVE A DISABLED OFFSPRING AND HAVE THEM DARE TO WORK HOW DARE THEY NOT INSTITUTIONALIZE THEM OR KEEP THEM HIDDEN!!1"
Bitch, please, NYT.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:05 am (UTC)I completely skipped over the source. *headdesks some more*
ty x_x
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 06:53 am (UTC)when there is a Korean proverb that states, "To aid a blind person is to bring bad luck upon yourself," there's gonna be some economic ramifications.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 12:52 pm (UTC)As a legally blind myself (and possibly fully blind in the future) I'm fucking insulted by this comment. So NOT true. There are so many things you can still do even if blind. But yeah South Koreans need to change their attitude towards disabilities. And their government needs to support more people with disabilities.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:05 pm (UTC)As a legally blind myself (and possibly fully blind in the future) I'm fucking insulted by this comment. So NOT true. There are so many things you can still do even if blind
I think that was said because there's such discrimination that it pretty much is the only thing the blind are guranteed as a job/career, not that they actually can't do anything else, which makes the comment quite sad.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 03:41 pm (UTC)What's sad is that's pretty close to the reality for them right now I bet. So this helps them in being allowed a guranteed job, but it also causes them to have more issues in trying to expand and call for equal oppurtunity.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:09 pm (UTC)It's interesting in how a majority is wanting equality with a minority group when it comes to a job/career. Those who are sighted get to experience what it's like on the other side of the specturm that the blind live through everyday, all the time. So while I can somewhat relate, my sympathies go moreso with the blind since it is very likely this is their only refuge until hiring practices are changed so they are not so discriminatory. So, I can definately see why the law is still there while shaking my head in disappointment that instead there were no looks into laws that change hiring practices so discrimination would be harder to weasal out of.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:48 pm (UTC)