2022.06.20 09:25 Kim remains engaged on current disability issues—defending the rights of protest groups that press authorities to honor commitments—and balances advocacy with family life and professional development. Soon she will research victim support in the U.S. as a visiting scholar at Duke, and she is open to future public roles. Her advice to young lawyers is practical: follow your lived interests, start by looking and participating, and let steady engagement—not grand gestures—build meaningful change.
Kim Ye‑won is the founder and sole staff member of the Disability Rights Law Center, a Seoul‑based nonprofit that provides free legal support to disabled people, women, and children who have suffered human rights violations. She handles everything from initial counseling and paperwork to policy research, splitting her time between her office in Seocho and family life in Gwangju. Despite a grueling schedule and frequent calls, Kim draws energy from her work and was recognized this year with the 12th Young Ilga Award for her public‑interest contributions.
Born with vision loss in one eye due to a medical error, Kim decided early on to become a lawyer so she could stand by individuals rather than just make objective rulings. After training at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, she helped establish a public‑interest legal fund and worked with organizations such as Dongcheon and the Seoul Disability Rights Center, where she handled over 1,000 cases and helped secure precedent recognizing prosthetic leg damage as a work injury. In 2017 she founded the Disability Rights Law Center to expand her ability to take on sensitive and systemic cases; the center operates without charging clients, relying on the legal fund and income from lectures and research.
Kim emphasizes solidarity and empowerment in her approach: many victims do not recognize their own abuse or feel able to speak out, and gaining their trust is the first step toward justice. She credits coalition work with other groups and activists for untangling complex cases and takes strength from seeing clients reclaim their voices in court and in life. Kim also calls for moving beyond rigid divisions—such as normal/abnormal or disabled/non‑disabled—and instead fostering inclusive, collective solutions to social problems.
19.12.12 10:46 Kim Ye-won is a public-interest lawyer and founder of the Disability Rights Law Center who has dedicated her career to defending people with disabilities, especially those facing intersectional discrimination. After passing the bar in 2009 and working at the Dongcheon Foundation, she helped establish the center in 2017 to fill legal blind spots and challenge systemic injustices. Her work combines courtroom advocacy with ongoing support, and she finds deep professional satisfaction in using the law to address social wrongs.
Central to Kim’s approach is the power of solidarity: she routinely partners with disability, child and women’s organizations throughout litigation and in post‑case protection for clients. Rather than focusing solely on case outcomes, she measures success by the emotional and practical change in survivors—helping them move from fear and self-blame to feeling supported and valued. Kim emphasizes empathetic communication, reminding clients that their harm was not their fault and coordinating networks that sustain recovery beyond legal victory.
Beyond institutional alliances, Kim argues for everyday solidarity between disabled and non-disabled people, rejecting patronizing or objectifying attitudes and promoting mutual aid and genuine dialogue. She frames her advocacy as a natural fit for her personality—direct, persistent, and upbeat—and insists that simple respect and communication are the first steps toward inclusion. Her optimism and refusal to become pessimistic about cases reflect a broader belief that collective effort can produce meaningful change for marginalized communities.
Original source: ‘명랑’ 김예원 변호사가 말하는 “연대의 힘” (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2019.03.12 Kim Ye-won, a prominent disability rights lawyer and director of the Disability Rights Law Center, frames her new book as both a personal and political project. Drawing on years of public-interest legal work and a lifelong love of film, she argues that society’s treatment of disabled people reflects environmental and attitudinal failures rather than individual deficits. Her book collects film scenes as entry points to discuss how dignity, work, education and community life are denied or distorted for people with disabilities.
Rather than treating disability as something to be pitied or “overcome,” Kim reads movies with a critical eye, using familiar scenes—from comedic moments to quiet domestic dramas—to reveal structural barriers: inaccessible labor markets, exclusionary education, and the presumption that disabled people are helpless or a public burden. She purposely writes in an accessible tone to shift social perception before legal reform can be fully effective, believing that laws alone cannot close gaps created by deep-seated stereotypes.
Kim’s central message is pragmatic and urgent: change the environment and attitudes so disabled people can live with dignity, pursue work and hobbies, and participate fully in community life. She illustrates this with a personal anecdote about her young daughter learning pity toward a disabled person, showing how early social conditioning reinforces harmful frames. The book is a call to rethink what “normal” means and to build social, legal and cultural conditions that respect everyone’s equal worth.
2020-08-26 00:01 Kim Yewon is a public-interest lawyer who has devoted her career to defending people pushed to the margins—primarily people with disabilities, women, and children. Known affectionately as a ‘키다리 아줌마’ (a benefactor figure), she handles difficult, often overlooked cases that other systems leave behind, spending long hours consulting clients and connecting them with practical supports while pursuing legal remedies. She emphasizes that many people with borderline or less visible disabilities fall through social blind spots that demand sensitive, sustained intervention rather than quick fixes.
Her path into public-interest law grew from faith-based legal circles during training and early work at a major law firm’s public-interest foundation. Dissatisfied with restrictive jurisdictions and fragmented services, she left stable positions to found the nonprofit solo practice Disability Rights Law Center, where she does not charge legal fees and funds work through lectures and writing. Supported by her husband—also a legal professional—Kim balances multiple roles as a mother, center director, and activist, and has proactively earned social work and sexual-violence counseling qualifications to better support clients beyond litigation.
A person with a disability herself (she lost one eye at birth), Kim brings lived experience to policy priorities such as deinstitutionalization and reforming the disability grading system. She also works on preventing sexual violence within churches, advocating democratic communication and preventive structures rather than reactive litigation alone. Recently recognized with a public-service award, she describes her goals simply: living faithfully day by day, raising her children well, and continuing long-term work in public-interest law to ensure no one is left in a human-rights blind spot.
2018-08-14 11:40:06 Kim Ye-won is a human-rights lawyer and disability-rights advocate who argues that separation, not lofty laws, drives discrimination. Drawing on her own experience of losing sight in one eye and attending mainstream schools, she emphasizes that true integration comes from everyday shared experiences—especially in early childhood education—rather than building more segregated institutions. She links this view to the broader principle that exclusion begins with separation, referencing historic desegregation precedents to stress why mixed environments matter for changing attitudes.
Professionally, Kim combined public-interest commitment with strategic legal advocacy. A graduate of the Judicial Research and Training Institute (class 41), she helped seed a public-interest legal fund with fellow trainees and worked at the Dongcheon foundation, the Seoul Disability Human Rights Center, and then founded the Disability Rights Law Center. Her legal wins include persuading the courts to treat a damaged prosthetic as a work-related injury, and she has been recognized with the Seoul welfare award and the inaugural Kwak Jeong-sook Human Rights Award for her work defending disabled workers, migrants and other marginalized groups.
Beyond courtroom victories, Kim highlights persistent practical barriers: classification systems that push students into special schools, long commutes to segregated facilities, and social isolation that leaves vulnerable people without everyday “ties” to others. She advocates for small, implementable changes—such as shared mealtimes and mixed classroom settings—to build empathy and connection from childhood. Balancing her legal work with being a mother of three, Kim stresses a pragmatic long-term commitment to remain in public-interest work and ensure laws are translated into lived inclusion.
23.07.21 17:05 Kim Ye‑won is a public‑interest lawyer who refuses to charge fees, leading a Disability Rights Law Center that provides free legal support to social minorities—people with disabilities, women, and children. A former public interest lawyer at a major foundation and a founder of her own center, she chose independence over donations so she can act without outside pressure. Now a visiting scholar at Duke and a mother of three, Kim balances litigation, advocacy and public education while sustaining her work through lectures, books and research contracts.
Her practice focuses on the hardest, most overlooked cases others won’t take: severe disability, sexual exploitation, and complex family or guardianship situations. Kim combines traditional legal work—evidence collection, criminal complaints and courtroom representation—with social‑work style interventions, coordinating with welfare offices, shelters and local agencies to relocate and protect clients. One striking example: she uncovered an organized sexual exploitation ring targeting a disabled woman, secured arrests, and arranged safe housing and ongoing supports.
Beyond individual cases, Kim pursues system fixes through both urgent administrative measures and long‑term law reform: contacting government departments, filing petitions, requesting legal interpretations, and pushing institutions to close procedural gaps that put vulnerable people at risk. She highlights how piecemeal government responses often miss people in crisis and stresses the need for integrated supports—employment programs for crime‑affected disabled women, safer account‑management rules, and clearer interagency pathways. Her model shows how uncompromised, holistic legal work can plug institutional holes and produce life‑changing outcomes for those left behind.
Original source: 제도의 구멍 때우는 0원짜리 변호사 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2020.04.11. 03:23 Kim Ye-won is a visually impaired public-interest lawyer who founded the Disability Rights Law Center in 2017. After completing judicial training in 2012, she worked at a major law firm’s public foundation and the Seoul Disability Rights Center before striking out on her own to provide broader, needs-based legal help. Born blind in one eye as a result of a forceps delivery, she says discovering the medical cause of her disability reinforced her belief that the law is the most precise tool to address injustice.
Kim provides pro bono representation to disabled people, women and children, taking cases regardless of location or the perceived likelihood of success. She has spoken out about repeat patterns of sexual exploitation — including the Telegram “nth room” crimes — and handled high-profile abuse cases such as confinement and extortion at care homes in Wonju and Hongcheon. Known for dramatic courtroom advocacy, she even removed her prosthetic eye during a trial to urge the harshest penalty for a child’s attacker. Beyond litigation, she actively researches rights issues and seeks out victims through media reports as well as formal referrals.
Kim argues that legal reform must lead social change: stronger laws and systems will shift public perception. She highlights ongoing discrimination, such as refusal to allow assisted voting for people with intellectual disabilities, and condemns outdated attitudes that portray exploited women as complicit rather than victims. While she downplays any singular sense of vocation, she hopes her sustained legal work will create broader social resonance and improved protections for minorities.
2019.12.02 08:00 Kim Ye-won is a public-interest lawyer who turned a personal disability and long career in public law into a mission to defend Korea’s most overlooked people. Born with a medical accident that cost her one eye, Kim passed the bar in 2009, worked at public-interest organizations including Dongcheon and the Seoul Disability Rights Center, and in 2017 founded a one-person nonprofit law center to take on cases nationwide. A busy mother of three, she says she is not “nice” by temperament — a quality she considers necessary for sustained legal fights on behalf of vulnerable clients.
Her Disability Rights Law Center focuses on people with little or no social support — orphans, basic livelihood recipients, children from single-parent homes and others left to suffer abuse or exploitation. The center does not charge fees and selects cases where institutional help is absent. Kim emphasizes accompaniment and empowerment rather than a savior role: building long-term trust, helping victims recognize their situation, and enabling them to become the subjects of their own cases. Small breakthroughs — from choosing a snack freely to asserting personal dignity — mark the meaningful progress she seeks.
Beyond individual cases, Kim pursues systemic change through litigation and law reform. She successfully pushed for stronger prosecution in a sexual-assault case involving a deaf woman, advocated for allowing visually impaired people to attempt a Class 1 driving test, and called for mandatory CCTV in special schools after a child’s unexplained death. Balancing casework, policy advocacy and family life, Kim attributes her stamina to practical determination and the support of her husband while continuing to press for rights and protections for disabled people nationwide.
2025.03.24 Kim Ye-won, a veteran public interest lawyer and founder of the Disability Rights Law Center, turns complex rights debates into approachable conversations in her new book, Pocket-Sized Human Rights. Known for providing free legal aid to social minorities and crime victims, she pairs frontline legal work and policy reform to address gaps in the system while also teaching and speaking to raise public sensitivity to human rights issues.
The book uses twenty questions from children to unpack everyday human rights topics, reframing rights not as abstract legalese but as the basic question: “How should people be treated?” Children’s queries repeatedly return to fairness—who gets treated equally, and why some limits are justified—making the book a clear, engaging way to explore concepts like discrimination and hate speech. Kim emphasizes that hate speech isn’t merely rude words but a force that drives people into hiding and excludes them from ordinary life.
Mindful not to be didactic, Kim wrote for young readers’ curiosity and adult reflection alike, aiming for accessible explanations that leave a lasting impact. She donated her advance to the Lighthouse Scholarship (supporting youth victims of crime), reflecting her commitment to vulnerable young people encountered through her legal work. Her central message: human rights are foundational to a sustainable society—protecting dignity helps everyone thrive—and she invites readers to engage confidently with these questions.
2018.11.21 19:45 Kim Ye-won is a South Korean public-interest lawyer who devotes her long, demanding days to representing people with disabilities. A medical accident left her blind in one eye at birth, which helped inspire her decision to become a lawyer to speak for socially vulnerable people who often lack knowledge or resources to challenge injustice. She founded the Disability Rights Law Center after working at public institutions and has handled over a thousand cases while balancing family life, even bringing her infant to court when childcare options were unavailable.
Her work goes beyond individual litigation: she combines client representation with research, education, and systemic advocacy to close legal blind spots. Kim drafts manuals, publishes studies on disability-rights advocacy, and pushes for law reform when existing statutes fail to address emerging harms — for example, ensuring that victims with disabilities are properly identified so crimes such as sexual assault are charged with appropriate severity, and calling attention to “grooming” and other abuses that remain inadequately covered by current law.
Faith and vocation intersect in her practice. A lifelong Christian, Kim sees her legal work as an expression of lay ministry and the church’s historical role as a movement of the laity reclaiming rights and duties. Confronting abusive practices within religious institutions tested her resolve, but it also reinforced her commitment to pursue justice professionally and spiritually — a mission recognized by awards and public recognition as she continues to push for both individual relief and systemic change.
Original source: “‘가짜 인권’은 없다, ‘가짜 사람’이 없듯이” (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2019.03.18 09:30 Kim Ye-won, a public-interest lawyer and well-known disability rights activist, has published a new book collecting her advocacy stories entitled “누구나 꽃이 피었습니다” (Everyone’s Flowers Bloomed). Known for powerful public images—like taking her baby to court—Kim draws on her experiences supporting disabled clients to reveal everyday injustices and the human side of legal work. The book foregrounds real cases and the people behind them, presented in accessible, narrative form for general readers.
A distinctive feature of the book is how Kim uses scenes from popular films as entry points to discuss legal and social issues. For example, she links the sloth workers in Zootopia to the labor realities faced by people with developmental disabilities and uses a scene from the film Marathon to explore barriers to judicial access for disabled individuals. Beyond individual cases, the author explains how to support and advocate for social minorities and details her involvement in both casework and systemic reform efforts.
Kim’s aim was to make rights-focused stories approachable—even for readers who aren’t film fans—by highlighting everyday human rights dilemmas and practical advocacy lessons. She hopes readers take away a simple but powerful message: like flowers that differ in color and scent, diverse people are each inherently dignified. The book offers both compassionate storytelling and concrete insights for activists, legal professionals, and any reader interested in social justice.
Original source: [법조계 신간 엿보기]누구나 꽃이 피었습니다 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2017.04.13 13:52 Last January, attorney Kim Yewon opened the Disability Rights Law Center and marked its 100th day while running essentially a one‑person legal office. Despite earning just 200,000 won in the first month (mainly lecture fees from disability organizations), she handles intake calls, drafts opinions and filings, and makes frequent site visits. Kim plans to grow the operation into a nonprofit as like‑minded colleagues join, but for now she treats the Center as a professional commitment rather than charity.
Kim’s path to disability advocacy is personal and strategic. After losing sight in one eye because of a medical incident, she recognized how information asymmetry leaves vulnerable people without legal protection and resolved to become a lawyer. She rose from local university scholarship support to pass the bar and, during training, saw systemic harms while working with refugee, sexual‑assault and disability organizations. To support public interest work she organized a legal fund with classmates that raised roughly 360 million won over three years, enabling sustained pro bono representation.
Her work emphasizes empowerment over paternalism. Kim highlights a landmark win where she helped a security guard whose prosthetic leg was damaged in a workplace accident, overturning a court ruling that denied industrial accident status. She has earned counseling and social‑work credentials to better serve disabled survivors of sexual violence, balances demanding public interest work with parenting two young children, and donates regularly with her husband. Kim frames her choices as both professional and personally fulfilling — a deliberate, joy‑driven vocation rather than mere volunteerism.
2022.12.01 05:16 article Law is the fundamental tool for protecting and realizing rights, yet the process of enforcing those rights is often unequal. The legal press plays a pivotal role as a focal point for people who need the law, and celebrating its renewed growth highlights the importance of sustained coverage. Political and civil liberties, and the socio-economic rights of marginalized groups, are frequently fragmented and hard to secure without concerted legal and social action.
Since the early 2000s, public interest lawyers have emerged to defend disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, sex workers, children and youth, migrant workers, and refugees; today more than 150 lawyers work across an expanding field that now includes climate justice, animal rights, and information rights. Early advocates had to develop expertise and organizational capacity with few precedents, but the accumulation of cases and experience has allowed newer areas of public-interest law to take root more quickly.
Sustaining and scaling this work requires institutional support and broader social reflection on how to make public-interest legal work viable long term. Public interest lawyers must combine legal expertise with activism, a dual role that is especially challenging for junior practitioners. If legal media consistently spotlights these efforts and the institutional foundations they need, it can strengthen solidarity, inform public debate, and accelerate the growth of an effective public-interest law movement.
On October 24 at the Koreana Hotel in Seoul, attorney Kim Yewon, a visually impaired lawyer and head of the Disability Rights Law Center, received the Hyupseong Social Contribution Award. The prize, presented by Jeong Cheolwon, chairman of Hyupseong Comprehensive Construction and founder of the Hyupseong Cultural Foundation, carries a monetary award of ₩50 million. The foundation, established in 2010, supports social contribution and scholarship initiatives in Busan and beyond.
Kim has provided pro bono legal support for socially vulnerable groups—including women, children, people with disabilities, and migrants—focusing on public-interest litigation rather than financial gain. At the ceremony, Jeong praised her dedication to helping marginalized people and victims of crime, calling her a model legal professional who helps build a warmer society.
Accepting the award, Kim pledged to continue working humbly so that the voices of those who suffer are respected within institutions and society. The recognition underscores the importance of legal aid, disability rights advocacy, and the role of public-interest lawyers in advancing social justice and inclusion.
