hankyoreh

Park Gyeong-seok

“You defaced the exterior of our service’s building during the ‘I, Daniel Blake. Welfare in South Korea Today’ event on February 15. We requested [an estimate of] restoration expenses from a professional company and received a reply stating that they would cost 2,717,000 won (US$2,358).”

Park Gyeong-seok, co-representative of the group Solidarity against Disability Discrimination (SADD), received a notice on Feb. 28 from the National Pension Service demanding over US$2,300 in damages for the defacing of its office during a Feb. 15 demonstration. Park had used red spray paint to write the message “I, Park Gyeong-seok, am a human being, not a dog” on the building, which houses the Social Security Committee. It was a South Korean version of the “I, Daniel Blake” declaration.

British director Ken Loach’s film “I, Daniel Blake,” which opened in late 2016, tells of a protagonist who applies for health benefits when a heart ailment leaves him unable to work. Instead of receiving the benefits, he suffers various indignities. At one point, he uses spray paint to write a message on the employment center building reading, “I, Daniel Blake, demand my appeal date [for benefits] before I starve. And change that shite music on the phones.”

Park said he anticipated the request for damages, but added that he was “shocked at the ‘otherizing’ attitude, the way they acted as though welfare issues for disabled people - such as disability class rulings and decisions on recognized points for assistance services - were not their responsibility.”

“They don’t reply at all about the demands I made to the service, but they send a notice focusing only on the fact that the building was defaced. . . .”

With its Feb. 15 demonstration, SADD demanded that the National Pension Service expand its welfare services for disabled persons and called for passage of an amendment to the Framework Act on Social Security to revise the consultation and coordination system between the central and provincial governments. Assistance services for disabled persons were reduced or halted for some local governments after the government’s Social Security Committee (chaired by the Prime Minister) decided in 2015 to demand local governments throughout South Korea fully reexamine their social security systems as part of a plan for “improved social services finance efficiency.”

The National Pension Service has demanded payment of the damages by Mar. 15, warning that it would pursue legal action if they are not paid in full.

“We need to share how conditions really are for disabled people, even if it’s like this,” Park said.

“Look at how much humiliation disabled people suffer as human beings under a system created by the state and the institutions enforcing it,” he added.

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]