Recently I read “Rush-hour Subway” by Park Kyoung-seok, a representative of Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination. The book taught me the history of protests for the rights of persons with disabilities.

In Korea, protests for disabled people’s mobility rights began in 2001. It was difficult for the students of the Nodeul School for the Disabled to go to school due to a lack of elevators at subway stations and low-floor buses. People with disabilities were injured or died falling from wheelchair lifts at subway stations. So the students and teachers of the school started fighting for the mobility rights of the disabled.

In 2002, a disabled person died in a fall using a wheelchair lift at Balsan Station. Park and other activists went on a hunger strike against the Seoul Metropolitan........

© The Korea Times