Disability discrimination in South Korea: routine and everyday aggressions toward disabled people

Abstract

In the past, the type of discrimination against persons with disabilities in South Korea was seen mainly as being related to the physical environment and social systems that ignored disability. However, the emergence of social model and anti-discrimination laws established in numerous countries has rapidly expanded the scope of social participation for persons with disabilities as well as their awareness of their rights. This article posits that a type of disability discrimination that could emerge in the future is microaggression, which can appear in diverse forms in newly formed human relationships as the scope of social participation increases.

Keywords:

• Social model
• anti-discrimination law
• social participation
• new human relationship
• microaggression

Introduction

The social model emerged during the 1970s through the efforts of many people with disabilities and stakeholders. Efforts were geared toward informing people of the existence of disabled people and demonstrating their value to society. Different countries’ anti-discrimination laws and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are indications that the negative views of disability and physical environments of societies with regard to disability have changed rapidly for the better. The social model, which constituted the ideological and practical focus of the disability movement, identified the source of societal oppression as the physical environment, which limited the options of individuals with disabilities (Shakespeare 2006). Through sustained effort, many positive changes were effected in countries in the Global North, across physical environments, institutions, and policies that previously limited the activities of people with disabilities, which have greatly contributed to improved awareness of the rights of people with disabilities.

These positive changes in the physical environment and improvement of the awareness of disabled people apply to South Korea as well. However, the rapid expansion of physical space and of the sense of rights for disabled people, who have been isolated and excluded in South Korea, have led to various forms of conflict and discrimination in new human relationships, which people with disabilities have never experienced before. Moreover, psychological and emotional affronts are not easy to grasp if the victims do not reveal themselves, and the accumulation of such injury can result in the social isolation or exclusion of people with disabilities, whether voluntarily or not. In this article, I examine the microaggressions that those who are socially disadvantaged and minorities experience today as a result of expanding the scope of social participation and improving awareness of rights. Specifically, I use as a case study microaggression toward people with disabilities in South Korea.

What is microaggression?

Microaggression refers to diverse discriminatory acts that are incessant, often gratuitous, and subtle offenses to certain categories of human beings because of their ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, or disability (Davis 1989; Solorzano 1998; Sue et al. 2007). Chester M. Pierce, a psychiatrist at Harvard University, coined the term microaggression in the 1970s to describe the psychological and emotional discrimination experienced by African Americans, describing it thus:

These assaults to black dignity and black hope are incessant and cumulative. Any single one may not be gross. In fact, the major vehicle for racism in this country is offenses done to blacks by whites in this sort of gratuitous, never-ending way. These offenses are micro-aggressions. Almost all black-white racial interactions are characterized by white put-downs, done in an automatic, preconscious, or unconscious fashion. These mini-disasters accumulate. It is the sum total of multiple micro-aggressions by whites to blacks that has pervasive effect to the stability and peace of this world. (Pierce 1974, 515)

Initially, microaggression was primarily a concept encompassing the psychological and emotional aspects of discrimination experienced by racial and ethnic minorities. However, as the notion of discrimination gradually expanded to include other socially vulnerable people, such as women (Sue 2010), children (Dyson 1990), and disabled people (Keller and Galgay 2010), different forms of it began to be identified. Microaggression is often invisible and can have negative mental and/or physical consequences for its victims (Wong et al. 2014). It can pose difficulties in developing diverse human relationships. Moreover, such discrimination is significant in that it is pervasive in a variety of human relationships, particularly as identified through its victims.

Causes and types of microaggression

Microaggression is considered to manifest in diverse ways because it often occurs imperceptibly in various human relationships, and only the victim can confirm its existence. Davis (1989), in a review of previous studies, outlines causes of microaggression identified by academics as follows.

Psychological explanations

According to cognitive psychology, microaggression results from the application of categorized thinking to experience. Indeed, contradictory incidents occur routinely in our daily lives, and our cognition requires categorization to cope most efficiently (Rosch 2002). From this perspective, microaggression is a process in which individuals deliberately refuse or avoid others in the process of forming relationships that are consistent with stereotypes formed in their personal experience.

Historical explanations

Historians posit that the cause of microaggression has historical roots: even in the early seventeenth century, African Americans living in the United States as indentured servants or free people had circumstances consistent with the principles of open but not equal opportunities. This early potential for egalitarianism was destroyed by the creation of a color-caste system (Davis 1989, 1562). According to this view, microaggression is a disadvantage experienced by victims due to a negative perception of the victims formed at a particular time or by specific social conditions.

Sue et al. (2007) created a taxonomy of racial microaggressions based on qualitative research findings and the social psychological literature divided into three types: microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations.

Microaggression toward disabled people in South Korea

As we have so far seen, the causes and forms of microaggression are diverse. This type of discrimination occurs invisibly in various human relationships, and it is not easy to grasp the actual extent or nature of the condition because only the victim can identify it. In the following, I present a case of microaggression toward a South Korean with disabilities. It was collected through an interview with a human rights activist for disabled people after being reviewed by Sungkyunkwan University Institutional Review Board (IRB File No. SKKU 2016-03-001):

Mr. Kim, who worked with able-bodied people in a regular company, is a person with physical disabilities using a wheelchair. He wanted to attend the department dinner with his colleagues after work, but most of the dining locales were not handicap-accessible facilities. Even though he attends the department dinners, he always feels sorry for his able-bodied colleagues because they had to assist him. He therefore often excused himself from department dinners for health reasons and so on. Sometimes his able-bodied colleagues in the department would tell him, ‘We envy you. You are able to escape freely [because of the disability]. We cannot do that even if we want to …’ Eventually, he summoned the courage and suggested to his boss that the department should select a place where he would be able to comfortably attend the department dinner. After that, he was able to enjoy department dinners with his colleagues at a place with facilities for the disabled. However, repeated department dinners in the same place caused disaffection with other able-bodied colleagues, who began to exclude him from their company in general and at the department dinners. He recognized this attitude of his able-bodied colleagues as an obvious example of discrimination against his disability. He presented his case to the National Human Rights Commission and it was indeed recognized as disability discrimination; the employer was urged by the National Human Rights Commission to take corrective action.

However, after this incident, Mr. Kim says that his work life became more difficult. In the workplace, his colleagues, after making a statement of intentionally mocking people with disabilities in the office, would ask him, ‘Oh … Is this discrimination against people with disabilities? Indeed? Listen to others as well. If you do this just for people with disabilities, then you are discriminating against people with disabilities. Then you should go to the National Human Rights Commission like me.’ His employers reversed all of the flexible and unofficial monthly leave schemes that had been granted considering Mr. Kim’s disability, and demanded that he should strictly observe working standards for employment contracts in line with those of able-bodied persons. Due to this attitude from his colleagues and his employers, Mr. Kim eventually left the company.

As can be seen from this example, microaggressions against persons with disabilities can be caused by a lack of understanding of the characteristics of disability or sensitivity to the damage caused by conflicts of interests. However, one thing to note here is that after the National Human Rights Commission’s corrective action, the form of discrimination against persons with disabilities transformed into a tricky situation that was difficult to judge legally. The reason for this phenomenon is that South Korea’s anti-discrimination law (Act on the Prohibition of Discrimination against Disabled Persons, Remedy against Infringement of Their Rights, etc.) strongly prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities and the adoption of the verifiable person’s responsibility for discrimination, unlike in other countries.

Conclusion

Here, I have looked at the causes and types of microaggression and a specific case involving a person with disabilities in South Korea. Worryingly, this type of discrimination is invisible in a variety of human relationships, and because of the onus to identify its existence being on the victims, microaggression remains a controversial subject.

Regarding such subtle types of discrimination, American psychologist Harris (2008) posed a piquant question about authenticity, meaning that there is no way to distinguish whether the acts identified as microaggression are indeed discriminatory acts against victims, or are the outcomes of their paranoid thinking. Harris’ ideas might seem plausible from the viewpoint of the traditional epistemological dichotomy of social science, such as structure and behavior, and existence and composition (namely, subjectivism and objectivism). Still, this underlines the most prevalent concern about these subtle types of discrimination, intentional or not, which is that they could have long-term negative effects on the physical and mental health of victims in their human relationships (Wong et al. 2014). Furthermore, subtle forms of discrimination, whose authenticity is difficult to judge by persons with disabilities who have been living in isolation and excluded from society, will only hinder their formation of future human relationships. These are serious problems in that they represent the possibility of keeping persons with disabilities isolated or excluded from society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.