Seoul mayor blasts advocacy group for people with disabilities

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon vowed to look out for the city’s underprivileged this year during a New Year’s press conference at City Hall on Monday morning. [YONHAP]

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon blasted a local advocacy group for people with disabilities that has held morning rush hour protests on the capital’s subways, saying during a New Year’s press conference on Monday that he doesn’t think the protestors are in any way “socially underprivileged.”

Oh insisted Seoul’s subway systems were better equipped with facilities serving those with disabilities compared to other advanced economies, warning the city would sue the group for financial losses accrued from delayed subway operations.

Oh’s scathing remarks aimed at the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) were in response to a question from the press asking what he was planning to tell the group when he sits down with its members on Thursday.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government last week announced that both sides agreed to meet face-to-face in attempts to iron out their differences.

Since January 2021, SADD has held some 100 protests at Seoul subway stations, urging the government to increase spending on welfare and mobility for people with disabilities. The protests, which involved SADD members in wheelchairs obstructing subway doors, have faced heavy public criticism because they were held at the busiest hours of the day and caused major delays.

“I don’t think the SADD [members] are socially underprivileged,” Oh said during Monday’s press conference. “Rather, citizens who suffer irreversible losses due to unexpected subway operation delays are the vulnerable ones.”

On requests from SADD to increase spending on deinstitutionalization — the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric institutions with less restrictive community mental health settings — the Seoul mayor said SADD ought to ask the central government for support because the Seoul city government has already met the group’s demands.

In regards to plans to increase Seoul’s bus and subway fares, Oh said he was willing to backpedal on the policy if the central government agrees to provide financial aid to make up for the city’s losses.

Seoul’s public transportation fees are expected to increase by some 300 to 400 won (24 to 33 cents) from as early as the end of April.

The city government said in an earlier statement that a hike — which would be the first in eight years — was “unavoidable” due to snowballing deficits in the city caused mainly by a nationwide welfare policy offering free rides to senior citizens and people with disabilities.

On real estate, Oh said pricey housing costs were the biggest obstacle to narrowing the gap between the rich and poor in Korea, vowing to implement policies that would push housing prices further down to the levels of the early former Moon Jae-in administration.

The Seoul mayor also lampooned Kim Ou-joon, a vocal critic of the conservative block and a former radio host of the Seoul government-backed Traffic Broadcasting System (TBS), saying that Kim did a great job “spending a lot of effort and radio waves to advocate a certain political party and a certain political faction at TBS, which is operated with public tax money.”

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]