By the time Lee Hye-gyeong received a diagnosis of glaucoma in 2005, she had already lost much of her vision. By now, Lee, a former shop assistant, can see only shapeless colors as she fumbles through Seoul’s crowded subway.
Still, for the past year and a half, commuting has been part of her daily routine. She awakens at 5:30am, 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 that for most of the past century has been reserved exclusively for the legally blind: masseur.
But lately she fears her prospects in this new profession could be threatened. Sighted people working as unlicensed masseurs have asked the Constitutional Court of South Korea to throw out a law that allows only the legally blind to become professional masseurs. They contend that the law violates their right to employment. A ruling could come as soon as next week.
Passions are intense on both sides of the debate over whether to preserve the restriction. Three people have died in protests over who is permitted to practice the trade.
Lee is concerned that the law might change and, with it, her chances for employment.
“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.”
Japanese colonialists in 1913 introduced to Korea the idea of reserving the role of masseurs solely for the blind. The prohibition against people with healthy sight was abolished in 1946 by the US military government but later reinstated in 1963. In a country where prejudice and a lack of official support have long restricted opportunities for the disabled, the blind have fiercely defended their exclusive right to the business.
REGISTERED
About 7,100 legally blind people work in about 1,000 massage parlors in South Korea, and they are the only legally registered masseurs in the country. But they can hardly meet the demand, so tens of thousands of so-called sports massage centers, skin-care salons, barbershops, hotels and public bath houses employ sighted, but illegal, massage workers. Estimates of their number range from 150,000 to 700,000.
National sports teams hire masseurs with healthy vision. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the government offered free massage training to the unemployed, regardless of the state of their eyesight.
“Every bride gets a full-body massage before her wedding, nearly always from unlicensed masseurs,” said Park Yoon-soo, president of the Massager Association of Korea, which is leading the legal challenge to the law. “This shows how absurd the law is.”
Members of Park’s association, which represents 120,000 unlicensed masseurs, are working openly and in defiance of the law. His office keeps a growing file of members who have been accused of practicing without a license. Those people are usually fined, with the fines ranging from US$450 to US$4,500, although the law calls for up to three years in prison.
“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,” he said.
The Constitution guarantees people the freedom to choose jobs, but it also requires the state to protect the disabled.
The two principles clashed in 2003 when sighted massage workers challenged the prohibition before the Constitutional Court. That time, the court ruled in favor of continuing to restrict the trade.
But in 2006, a reconstituted court issued a ruling that favored the sighted, saying that restricting a choice of jobs by government directive — the prohibition was not then a formal law — was “excessively” discriminatory.
PROTESTS
That set off weeks of protests by the blind. Some blind masseurs leaped from buildings and jumped on to subway tracks. Two blind people 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 massage monopoly into law.
Then the sighted staged their own protests in response to the new law. One activist killed himself by jumping from the same Han River bridge. More than 7,300 sighted masseurs have joined in the current lawsuit before the Constitutional Court.
Earlier this month, blind protesters again jumped from the Han River bridge, this time to protest a government proposal to license skin-care specialists to also give massages. The protesters demanded that the skin-care specialists be permitted only to massage heads and hands, leaving the rest of the body to the blind.
Overall, conditions for the disabled in South Korea have generally improved in recent years. Subways and buildings have begun improving access to the handicapped. 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 in wheelchairs, and many people who use canes or wheelchairs complain that taxis will not stop for them.
Some blind people 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.
Dong Seong-geun, a blind masseur, staged a lone protest in front of the Constitutional Court recently.
“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?”
The sighted masseurs, for their part, argue that the law is holding the blind back by confining them to a single vocation.
“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, a sighted masseur.
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