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.
2022.05.04 07:00 Kim Ye-won is a disability rights lawyer and a visually impaired survivor who lost an eye in a medical incident. Working at the Disability Rights Law Center, she became an outspoken advocate because she was outraged that society routinely ignores people who cannot easily speak for themselves. Kim has spoken publicly on heated national debates—such as subway protests led by disability activists and the recent overhaul of prosecutorial powers—and has written a book reflecting on everyday violences that wound marginalized people.
On criminal justice reform, Kim rejects the current “complete removal of prosecution’s investigative powers” approach (commonly debated as 검수완박) as a flawed outcome that could disadvantage ordinary citizens. She supports the principle of separating investigation and prosecution, but argues the real reform should restore prosecutorial investigative supervision while making police the primary first-responders. That supervisory “double-check” would protect victims who find it difficult to pursue appeals: Kim notes only a small fraction of police non-prosecution decisions are contested, leaving many aggrieved citizens without effective remedies.
Kim defends disability-led protests—such as actions by the National Solidarity for the Elimination of Disability Discrimination (Jeonjangyeon)—as necessary to expose persistent barriers to mobility, and criticizes political leaders for stoking blame instead of seeking solutions. She points out that Korea’s Disability Discrimination Act already requires reasonable accommodations, but implementation fails mainly for lack of political will and funding. Kim urges policymakers to invest in accessible infrastructure, stop weaponizing public frustration for political gain, and cultivate solidarity so that disabled people’s dignity and practical rights can be restored; her book and legal work stem from that conviction that change is possible when society chooses to act.
2022.02.28 16:07 Kim Ye-won, a leading disability-rights lawyer and director of the Disability Rights Law Center, is known for her warm, accessible approach and extraordinary communication skills. She builds rapport with clients across cognitive and physical disabilities, meets people at their level, and often remains a trusted supporter long after cases close. Her bedside manner and steady presence make clients feel heard and respected, and she routinely makes herself available even in crisis situations at odd hours.
Believing that good intentions must be matched by skill, Kim pursued professional training as a social worker and sexual-violence counselor to avoid relying on intuition alone. In a notable sexual-abuse case she reframed invasive courtroom questioning into the client’s own language and submitted recorded testimony to prevent re-traumatization. She also practices an atypical pro bono model: she does not charge financially disadvantaged clients, funds her office through research, lectures and writing, and channels any surplus to causes in need — treating law as a tool for social good rather than personal gain.
Kim is also an outspoken critic of policies that sideline the voices of those they claim to protect. She has challenged administrative practices in child protection that can disregard children’s agency, citing cases where poorly designed procedures caused prolonged harm. Her practical advice to younger lawyers: start small—join committees, offer short pro bono consultations, and gradually expand involvement to discover whether public-interest work fits your strengths and sustainment.
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.
2018.10.14 11:27 Attorney Kim Yewon made headlines after attending a public forum and courtroom appearances with her roughly 100-day-old baby in tow. Judges and colleagues were reportedly surprised — sometimes asking why she was there — but Kim explains she had little choice: as a public-interest lawyer representing criminal victims, court dates are set around clients and cannot easily be postponed, and self-employed lawyers lack the social protections that would make leave or childcare feasible. In practice she balances short courtroom appearances, quieting her child between statements, and leaving more intensive parts like witness examinations to times when childcare is available.
Her experience highlights broader gaps in Korea’s childcare and labor systems. Although some public childcare programs list preferences for larger families, caregiver matching often leaves those households underserved because individual providers can refuse assignments; the result is long waits or effectively having to give up. Kim points to the need for both reliable institutional childcare (similar to France’s crèche system) and stronger income supports so families and parents can meaningfully choose whether to work or provide full-time care without facing economic ruin.
Beyond her personal story, Kim founded and runs the Disability Rights Law Center, providing legal aid to people whose rights were violated because of disability — especially those with little or no support network, including disabled children, women, and people with developmental or mental disabilities. Her practice combines individual representation in sexual-violence and abuse cases with advocacy for systemic reform to remove institutional barriers, and she calls for more responsible media language and policies that protect victims while expanding real choices for working parents.
2021-03-12 11:01:48 Kim Yewon, a lawyer who lost sight in one eye due to a birth-related medical incident, turned a personal experience of social stigma into a lifelong commitment to public interest law. Rather than pursuing a more lucrative private practice, she founded the Disability Rights Law Center to provide on-the-ground legal support for people with disabilities, children and women. Working between Gwangju and Seoul and running her practice from a room in her home while raising three children, Kim has handled over 1,000 legal matters, including cases of financial exploitation against intellectually disabled clients that she successfully exposed through careful evidence work.
Kim treats law as a practical tool for social change and has combined individual casework with active participation in the legislative process. Her work helped change rules to allow some visually impaired people to take a Class 1 driving test, and she contributed expert input during the legislative debate over the high-profile Jeong-in case, warning that simply increasing penalties can unintentionally harm victims by raising the burden of proof. She emphasizes that thoughtful, field-informed drafting is crucial because well-intentioned laws often shrink in effect when implemented with administrative discretion.
Despite growing public interest in minority and victim issues after headline cases, Kim notes that attention is often short-lived and implementation gaps persist—such as when laws intended to require accessibility features leave room for local authorities to opt out. Her clinic receives many inquiries but must triage cases due to limited resources; income comes mainly from lectures and government advisory work. Balancing heavy demand with family life and constrained funding, Kim remains focused on supporting the most vulnerable and pushing for laws and practices that work in reality, not just on paper.
2021.02.13 17:00 Kim Yewon, a long-time child abuse advocate and head of the Disability Rights Law Center who has been active on issues related to the so-called ‘Jeongin Act,’ publicly argued for creating a distinct crime of ‘child abuse homicide’ under Korea’s Child Abuse Punishment Act. In a social media post on the 10th, she said cases where a perpetrator’s recklessness could foreseeably lead to a child’s death should be prosecuted more severely, stressing that abused children — who are effectively unable to defend themselves — warrant tougher penalties than ordinary homicide charges may deliver.
Kim emphasized that proving specific intent to kill in most child abuse cases is often difficult, and bluntly raising minimum sentences for existing categories like ‘death by child abuse’ could prolong legal pain for victims and their families. Instead, she proposed introducing a legal category that covers cases with recklessness or dolus eventualis where death was a foreseeable outcome, allowing the justice system to pursue harsher punishment in the relatively rare but most egregious instances.
She also noted gaps in current sentencing guidance: only serious injury and fatality under the Child Abuse Punishment Act have clear sentencing standards. Kim urged the Supreme Court’s Sentencing Commission to create dedicated sentencing guidelines for crimes under the Child Welfare Act and child abuse offenses to ensure consistent, appropriate penalties and stronger protection for vulnerable children.
2019-01-31 06:00 Kim Ye‑won is a solo nonprofit lawyer who runs the Disability Rights Law Center in Seoul, dedicating her practice to people with developmental disabilities, disabled children and women who struggle to access legal help. Her work is visceral and public: she once removed her prosthetic eye in court to plead for the maximum sentence in a case where a five‑year‑old child was blinded, and she has represented clients under extremely constrained conditions through extensive pro bono work. The center operates on minimal resources — the Seoul Bar Association provided office space — and Kim combines strategic litigation with direct client advocacy to advance disability rights and accountability.
Her career is inseparable from motherhood. As a mother of three, she has brought infants into court when childcare was unavailable, famously breastfeeding a 50‑day‑old in the courtroom to avoid missing critical hearings. Kim candidly recounts regrets about placing her first child full‑time in daycare at 82 days and explains that as a self‑employed public interest lawyer she could not take extended leave for later children, forcing practical choices that many working mothers face. Her visible actions sparked strong reactions — surprise from judges, solidarity from fellow women lawyers, and public admiration that she treats as ordinary necessity rather than heroism.
Kim’s personal history shapes her commitment: she lost sight in one eye due to a medical accident, earned law school on full scholarship, and entered public interest work through experiences at Dongcheon and the Seoul Disability Human Rights Center before founding her own center in 2017. Supported by a like‑minded husband who is a judge, the couple regularly donates a portion of their income to charities; Kim channels the rest of her time into client work, household routines she calls a hobby, and relentless fieldwork that keeps her deeply engaged with clients’ lives. Her practice demonstrates a pragmatic, embodied approach to legal advocacy — one that melds lived experience, parental responsibility and tireless pro bono service to protect society’s most vulnerable.
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.
2018.03.19 17:52 Kim Ye-won, a 36-year-old lawyer and founder of the Disability Rights Law Center, has been selected as the first recipient of the Kwak Jeong-sook Human Rights Award. The prize was created to honor the legacy of the late lawmaker and disability rights activist Kwak Jeong-sook, who lived with a spinal cord injury, led the Korean Women with Disabilities Union, and served as a proportional representative in the National Assembly for the Democratic Labor Party.
Kim’s legal career and advocacy work were cited in the selection. A graduate of Chuncheon High School and Gangwon National University Law School, she passed the bar in 2009 and worked at the Dongcheon public interest foundation affiliated with the law firm Bae, Kim & Lee. There she helped secure a landmark Supreme Court ruling recognizing that damage to a prosthetic leg used by a disabled worker can qualify as a work-related injury. Kim later worked at the Seoul Disability Rights Center and in 2017 established a nonprofit law office dedicated exclusively to representing victims of disability rights violations.
Responding to the award, Kim said she views it not as recognition of past work but as encouragement to continue. The award ceremony will be held on the 20th alongside a memorial event marking the second anniversary of Kwak Jeong-sook’s passing, in Gwangju’s Seo-gu at the Gwangju Citizen Media Center.
Kim Ye-won, a lawyer who lost an eye due to a medical accident before birth, is the subject of a newly revised memoir and advocacy book that documents her work defending marginalized people pro bono. The updated edition builds on her 2021 book and reflects on how becoming visually impaired reshaped her view of the world and her practice of law. Published by Woongjin Knowledge House, the book frames her legal work as both professional advocacy and human-rights activism.
Through vivid, humane anecdotes—bringing warm tteok-mandu-guk to a sexual assault victim who feared going hungry that night, sharing snacks and walks in the park with a child caught between warring parents—Kim emphasizes the importance of meeting clients as individuals rather than case numbers. The narrative highlights her close, personal approach to clients, the small gestures that build trust, and the conviction that looking closely at each person reveals deeper needs and a path to recovery. The book also paints the portrait of a tireless lawyer zipping between courts and police stations on a scooter, committed to showing up and bearing witness.
Alongside the memoir, the article introduces a practical companion for victims of crime: “The Art of Filing a Criminal Complaint,” a guide by criminal-law practitioners that demystifies the complaint process. Aimed at people who may be disillusioned by long investigations or unexpected case outcomes, it explains procedures, realistic expectations, and tactical steps from drafting a complaint through trial. With legal explanations, real-world examples, and templates, the guide seeks to help victims pursue redress more effectively without inadvertently harming their own position.
2020.09.08 Kim Yewon’s children’s book begins in a fourth-grade classroom where Jo-han, a student with developmental disabilities, causes a small disturbance by taking and playing a classmate’s recorder. The classmates react with distancing remarks and pity, and the teacher challenges them with a simple but powerful homework question: “What does it mean to live together?” The story uses this familiar school setting to explore how easy it is to confine a person to limiting labels and how community spaces shape our responses to difference.
The author, Kim Yewon, is a visually impaired human-rights lawyer who works supporting victims of rights violations and advocating for legal reform. Drawing on her experience and earlier work that connected film and real disability stories, she intentionally wrote for children to encourage early, empathetic thinking about diversity. The book’s title—taken from a key scene where a child reveals their true self to a friend—captures the central message: people are not merely “strange” or “sick,” but individuals with distinct gifts, like flowers with different colors and scents.
The book challenges common paternalistic reactions—”poor thing,” “how difficult”—that shrink a person’s identity and instead invites small, practical changes in everyday behavior. Kim recommends simple acts of kindness and speaking up when needed, arguing that ordinary people’s small, consistent efforts have great power to change social norms. She also suggests empathy-building media such as Inside Out and urges readers to practice “gentle interventions” in daily life to help create a more inclusive community.
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.)
2019년04월23일 14:35 Kim Yewon, a lawyer who lost sight in one eye at birth, founded the Disability Rights Law Center in 2017 to provide pro bono legal help and advocate for people with disabilities. Drawing on experience at a major law firm and a public-interest legal foundation, she has offered over 1,000 free consultations before opening the center and hundreds more since, focusing on everyday legal access gaps faced by social minorities and people with disabilities.
Through her casework Kim exposes systemic failures in the justice system when disability is not taken into account. She recounts wrongful outcomes—such as a long-term labor exploitation case where only about 2 million won was initially recognized—resulting from investigations and trials that ignored disability characteristics. Kim also highlights the particular vulnerability of women with disabilities to sexual exploitation and the absence of specialized public defenders or tailored legal processes for abuse victims.
Beyond individual cases, Kim is pushing for law and policy changes: improved support for online and anonymous sexual exploitation victims, legal recognition of disabled people as victims rather than offenders, and accessible voting materials (easy-to-read ballots and public materials) for people with developmental disabilities. She urges the public to pay attention and report injustices—small acts of interest and intervention, she says, can change a life—and pledges to continue advocating for institutional reforms and expanded victim support.
2018-04-18 21:21 Seoul honored blind human rights lawyer Kim Ye-won with its Human Rights Welfare Grand Prize in recognition of her sustained efforts to advance disability rights. A former staffer at the Dongcheon Foundation, Kim has worked on behalf of social minorities and served as the standing counsel at the Seoul Disability Rights Center since 2014. She also founded the Disability Rights Law Center early last year, further institutionalizing legal support for people with disabilities.
The city also recognized other contributors to disability welfare: Dr. Lee Geung-ho, founder of The Smile Dental Clinic, received the top award in the disability welfare support category for running a specialized dental center and providing pro bono care. In the disability self-advocacy category, Hong Seo-yoon, president of the Korea Disabled Tourism Association, was honored for leadership in promoting accessible travel and inclusion for people with disabilities.
The awards were presented at the “Together Seoul Nuri Festival” held at SETEC in Gangnam, highlighting Seoul’s efforts to celebrate Disability Day and spotlight practical initiatives that improve rights, services, and social participation for people with disabilities. The ceremony underscored the role of legal advocacy, medical volunteerism, and sector-specific leadership in driving more inclusive policies and everyday access across the city.
Original source: 장애인의 날 기념 인권 복지상 대상에 김예원씨 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
In the wake of the widely publicized Jeong‑in child‑abuse case, the National Assembly rushed forward with more than a dozen bills proposing stiffer penalties and mandatory immediate separation of children after two abuse reports. Kim Ye‑won, a public‑interest lawyer who has worked with child and youth victims, cautions that many of these measures—some of which mirror amendments already passed—are politically popular but could do more harm than good if enacted without careful design.
Kim’s core concern is that raising statutory maximums or especially minimum sentences changes how prosecutors and judges handle cases: higher potential penalties increase the evidentiary bar for conviction, encouraging prosecutors to decline to indict weakly evidenced cases and prompting judges to demand stronger proof, which can result in more dismissals or acquittals. She points to recent experience in cases of sexual violence against people with disabilities, where tougher penalties coincided with reduced prosecution rates, and warns that heavier punishment regimes also prolong and intensify trauma for victims through repeated, invasive questioning. She also flags mandatory “immediate separation” policies as problematic—both because some versions are redundant with recent law changes and because blunt removal rules can have unintended consequences for children and families.
Rather than headline-grabbing sentencing hikes, Kim recommends targeted, practitioner‑informed reforms: revise and strengthen judicial sentencing guidelines (양형 기준) so courts impose appropriate punishments in practice; invest in investigative capacity, evidence collection, and victim‑centered procedures to secure convictions without retraumatizing victims; and design statutory changes in consultation with front‑line child‑welfare and legal professionals. Her message is a cautionary one: symbolic or politically reactive bills risk nullifying public attention and may fail victims unless lawmakers focus on effective, evidence‑based fixes.
2023.08.28 15:01 In “I Didn’t Know It Would Hurt,” public-interest lawyer Kim Ye-won—who represents and stands in solidarity with people with disabilities and other marginalized crime victims—draws readers into the lived realities of prejudice, exclusion, and everyday violence. Writing from personal and professional experience (she is visually impaired herself), Kim illustrates how thoughtless words, looks, and actions can wound, and she challenges the tendency to label disabled people as “weak” rather than as full, distinct individuals deserving of dignity and equal treatment.
The book also examines how crises like the pandemic intensified isolation for people with mobility or immune vulnerabilities and exposed gaps in legal and social protections. Kim’s candid lectures and advocacy work underline the emotional and systemic toll of exclusion while arguing for a society that recognizes ordinary humanity and equal worth. Her account emphasizes that respecting people with disabilities requires structural support as well as a cultural shift in how we see and speak about difference.
Ultimately the book is a call to action: move beyond one-off sympathy to sustained change by becoming more conscious of language and everyday behavior. Kim urges readers to reflect on moments of complicity, replace derogatory expressions with respectful ones, and support continuous disability-rights education. Small, consistent practices—choosing words carefully, acknowledging vulnerability, and standing in solidarity—are presented as the practical starting points for long-term social transformation.
Original source: 무심코 사용하는 비하의 말을 존중의 말로 (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.
2019.04.04 15:25 Kim Ye-won, a busy disability-rights lawyer and founder of the Disability Rights Law Center, balances a demanding professional life with caring for three children. Recognized with multiple awards and the recent book ‘누구나 꽃이 피었습니다’ that aims to popularize disability rights, she travels nationwide to represent victims, often working under difficult conditions (from writing filings on trains to conducting phone consultations in unheated rooms) while remaining resolute and upbeat about her mission.
Her commitment to disability rights deepened after handling the notorious Wonju Gurae ‘‘Sarang’s House’ case, in which dozens of people with disabilities suffered long-term abuse, confinement and disappearance. The shocking details and the light sentencing of the perpetrator provoked a deep sense of outrage in Kim and convinced her that litigation and public advocacy were necessary to protect vulnerable people and expose systemic failures in care and oversight.
Dissatisfied with limits on public institutions, Kim established the Disability Rights Law Center in 2017 to provide more mobile, accessible legal help beyond Seoul and to reach victims who do not know how or where to report abuses. She has handled over a thousand consultations, serves as a steadfast legal companion for clients, and focuses on achieving systemic change and practical remedies—even when immediate legal options are limited—so that victims can rebuild their lives and future harms can be prevented.
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.
Kim Ye-won is a one-person public-interest lawyer running the Disability Rights Law Center, who provides free representation to people with disabilities across criminal, administrative and civil cases. She handles heavy caseloads alone—recently supporting dozens of cases in months—and combines individual litigation with systemic projects such as producing legal support manuals for abuse victims, pushing for regulatory changes in disability sports, and campaigning for revisions to sexual protection laws for children and youth. Her record includes landmark successes: persuading the Supreme Court to recognize a prosthetic leg’s damage as an occupational injury, securing a law change to allow one-eyed applicants to take a class-1 driving test, and winning awards for human-rights advocacy.
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.)
Anecdotes in the piece—like confronting a stranger in an elevator over an unreturned tumbler—illustrate how small, uncomfortable acts of calling out wrongdoing can nudge conscience and spur incremental social change. The author argues that while change is slow, individual moments of accountability create tiny ripples that may encourage people to reconsider selfish habits and unjust behaviors.
The essay centers on lawyer and activist Kim Ye-won and her book, which resonates with the popular drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo. As a visually impaired lawyer, a mother, and a defender of marginalized clients, Kim sees her legal work as helping people reclaim their identities and rights. She laments that while technology advances, social sensitivity to human rights often stagnates, and institutions keep applying uniform standards that ignore differences in disability, gender, race, and background.
Through courtroom stories, Kim exposes the darker sides of human rationalization—perpetrators who deny harm and systems that overlook vulnerable people. Yet she remains committed to the work, comparing civic conscience-raising to Socrates’ proverbial prod: small piercings that wake the larger social body. The central plea is simple and firm—things that are wrong must be named—and the book is offered as a reminder that everyday accountability and legal advocacy together help move society forward.
2022.10.29. 03:00 Kim Ye‑won is a visually impaired human-rights lawyer who has spent more than a decade providing pro bono legal aid to children, people with disabilities, and other marginalized victims of abuse. Born with a medical accident that cost her an eye, she turned personal injustice into public advocacy, handling roughly 1,000 cases and challenging institutional discrimination. Her work ranges from representing developmentally disabled victims of sexual and labor exploitation to campaigning for legislative change and researching victim support systems as a visiting scholar at Duke University.
Kim argues that focusing only on sensational child‑abuse cases or increasing statutory penalties does not solve the underlying problem. She highlights systemic failures: unclear roles and poor information‑sharing among police, local government, schools, and child protection agencies, as well as a practice of automatic family separation that often ignores the child’s wishes and can retraumatize victims. Kim warns that harsher maximum sentences can paradoxically reduce prosecutions by raising evidentiary thresholds, and she calls for stronger, child‑centered interventions—monitoring, support for victims, and measures to prevent parental reoffending—rather than reflexive criminalization.
Beyond litigation on child abuse, Kim has led long campaigns against discriminatory rules—most notably a seven‑year effort to change licensing laws so visually impaired drivers can renew Class 1 licenses—and continues to press for systemic reform. She emphasizes that abuse occurs across all socioeconomic groups and urges the public to report suspicions rather than assuming abuse is limited to the most visible cases. Her message: protect children by centering their voices, reform fragmented institutions, and address discrimination against people with disabilities as part of a broader justice agenda.
2022-09-16 00:05 Public awareness of autism and developmental disabilities in South Korea has grown since the hit drama ‘Extraordinary Attorney Woo,’ but advocacy groups warn that attention alone cannot prevent recurring tragedies in families caring for people with developmental disabilities. Kim Ye-won, founder and lead attorney of the Disability Rights Law Center, says fatal incidents continue to happen monthly despite increased visibility, and that structural problems—particularly chronic underfunding—are the root cause.
Kim, a visually impaired lawyer who has worked in public-interest law for over a decade and runs a pro bono practice handling 50–100 cases at a time, was recently named a Kakao Impact Fellow and is currently a visiting scholar at Duke University. She uses fellowship support to sustain legal aid and plans regional collaborations to help vulnerable urban populations. Kim emphasizes she selects cases she can meaningfully support—often representing people who cannot pay—and rejects comparisons to dramatized portrayals despite the media attention.
The policy gap is stark: the 2023 Ministry of Health and Welfare budget allocates only 4.8 billion KRW for deinstitutionalization out of roughly 2.2 trillion KRW classed as disability rights spending, and Korea’s disability welfare budget equals just 0.61% of GDP versus the OECD average of 2.02%. Kim calls for significantly increased funding and staffing for community-based supports and ‘deinstitutionalization,’ and continues advocacy work including successful legal reforms (e.g., 2016 changes allowing visually impaired applicants to sit certain driving tests) and current research at Duke on victim support systems for hard-to-detect, power-based crimes like child abuse and intimate-partner sexual violence.
Original source: “장애인에 관심 커졌지만 예산지원 아직 멀어” (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2022.07.26 10:54 Korean attorney Kim Ye-won, often compared to the hit drama character Woo Young-woo, has turned personal hardship into a career defending disabled victims. Born with vision loss from a medical accident, she worked at a major law firm’s public foundation before leaving to provide frontline legal help. In 2017 she founded the Disability Rights Law Center to offer early, on-the-ground intervention and free legal representation to people with disabilities who face extreme abuse and neglect.
Kim’s pro bono practice has handled harrowing cases — developmental disabled people subjected to sexual exploitation by neighbors or family, long-term labor trafficking, and victims rescued from unregistered facilities. She emphasizes early intervention and basic stability: securing safe housing and psychological support so survivors can begin to speak about abuse and pursue justice. Kim combines legal advocacy with direct care, sometimes inviting traumatized clients to her home to help them regain trust and safety, and she supports her work through speaking, writing, and commissioned research.
Beyond individual cases, Kim has influenced policy and public awareness: she led changes improving web accessibility for visually impaired users and helped open access to class-1 driving tests for people with visual impairments, earning official commendations and the inaugural Kwak Jeong-sook human rights award. She has served on multiple government and civic human-rights committees and defends disability movements calling for mobility rights. Her own experiences with school bullying and prejudice inform a pragmatic, survivor-centered approach that blends legal action with concrete supports to restore dignity and autonomy to disabled people.
2021.08.05 06:29 Kim Ye-won, head of the Disability Rights Law Center, argues that Korea’s new “immediate separation” policy—which allows authorities to remove a child after two reports of abuse—was rushed through after the Jeong‑in case and is structurally flawed. While child abuse must be punished, the law concentrates on punishment and ad hoc removals without legal safeguards: key procedures are left to unpublished manuals, decisions are made on the spot by police or social workers, there is little prospect of judicial review or predictable timelines, and accountability is unclear.
The policy often sidelines the child’s voice and wellbeing. Kim stresses that removal can be necessary and stabilizing in violent or neglectful homes, but current practice rarely verifies what the child wants or explains decisions in child‑appropriate language. The result can be new trauma rather than protection. The system also disproportionately affects poor, marginalized, or migrant families—those without resources to contest removals—while wealthier families can evade consequences, creating a de facto class bias and a harmful social message about who should be allowed to parent.
To fix this, Kim calls for legal and procedural reform: restore judicial oversight or clear statutory limits, publish transparent protocols, guarantee predictable timelines and avenues for appeal, and legally require child‑centered practices such as age‑appropriate explanations and measures that preserve safe emotional bonds with caregivers. Adequate funding, oversight, and formalized methods for eliciting and recording children’s wishes are essential so that protection means more than mere removal and truly safeguards children’s dignity and long‑term wellbeing.
Original source: “가난하고 못 배웠으면 애 낳지 말란 신호 같아” (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2021-03-12 09:02:01 Kim Ye‑won is a veteran public-interest lawyer who has handled more than 1,000 cases for people with disabilities, women and children. Born with a medical injury that cost her one eye, she says she rarely felt personally discriminated against but came to recognize that disability is shaped by social evaluation. Working from a small home office while raising three children and commuting between Gwangju and Seoul, Kim takes on difficult on-the-ground cases—one notable client was an intellectually disabled man whose life savings were siphoned off and whose transaction records included purchases he never made—leading to criminal complaints and corrective action.
Rather than practicing in corporate settings, Kim founded and runs a disability-rights law center to meet clients in the field and to shape practical policy. She helped change rules so some visually impaired people can take a Class 1 driving test and played a leading role in drafting responses to high-profile child-abuse cases. On legislation she urges caution: simply raising penalties can deepen victims’ burdens because higher sentences raise evidentiary thresholds. Her approach emphasizes laws that reflect frontline realities and protect victims in practice, not just on paper.
Kim welcomes the growing public attention to marginalized groups but worries that media-driven interest is often short-lived and that poorly drafted laws fail at enforcement. She notes concrete implementation problems—such as ambiguous exemptions for road-occupation fees that undercut a law’s intent to require ramps—and stresses sustained, field-informed reform. With limited resources, most of her income comes from lectures and government consultations; she concentrates on the hardest cases and argues that the law, when grounded in real experience, is a vital tool for social change.
Kim Ye-won, founder and sole operator of the non‑profit Disability Rights Law Center, has spent her legal career representing people who cannot advocate for themselves — pro bono. Though she was born with the loss of one eye, Kim says she only recognized the depth of systemic discrimination after becoming a lawyer. Her work combines individual litigation with policy research and institutional reform to protect the rights and dignity of marginalized groups.
High‑profile abuse and embezzlement cases, including the 2012 Wonju Girae Sarang’s House and the 2013 Hongcheon Siloam Pond House, convinced Kim that confronting direct violence is only part of the task. Many clients face severe communication barriers, so she insists on exhausting all methods to obtain testimony and access to justice — even using iris‑recognition technology to capture the statement of a client with profound motor and speech impairments when conventional methods failed.
Beyond litigation, Kim urges a shift in language and attitudes: replace the term “socially weak” with “social minorities” to avoid defining people by helplessness. She stresses the importance of equal, not patronizing, communication — for example, allowing visually impaired people to state their preferred mode of assistance — and envisions a society where diverse voices are heard and each person’s agency is respected.
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.)
2019.11.16 18:18:00 A brutal discovery in January 1990 of a female victim near the Nakdong River led to arrests almost two years later when two men, described by a witness as a “big man and a small man,” were brought in, confessed, and were ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving 21 years and being released in 2013 through special commutation, the two men have consistently maintained their innocence, alleging that their confessions were coerced through police torture. They filed for a retrial in 2017, and the case has resurfaced in public attention as it reaches its latest legal turning point nearly three decades after the crime.
The retrial process reached an unusual intensity: the Busan High Court held its seventh and final hearing on November 14 to decide whether to open a full retrial—a procedural rarity for an ordinary criminal case. Former investigators named by the defendants largely testified that they did not recall the case or denied using torture, while a prosecutor from the government’s past-investigation unit testified about the review that found evidence suggesting the defendants’ confessions were obtained by physical coercion. The Ministry-linked past-investigation committee concluded that police abuse likely produced false confessions, but its findings do not carry the same legal weight as court verdicts, and some factual gaps remain contested in court.
At the hearing the prosecution urged caution, stressing that allowing retrials too readily could undermine finality in criminal law and arguing that the past-review body’s conclusions have limited evidentiary force. Defense counsel and independent journalists and experts countered that extensive new evidence, forensic reviews, and expert analyses justify reopening the case and demanded that the court correct a possible historic miscarriage of justice. With the court now weighing witness testimony, investigatory reports, and competing legal standards, its imminent ruling will carry major implications for accountability in past police investigations and the standards for overturning long-settled convictions in South Korea.
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.
2017.07.07 18:00 A person with a disability has filed a lawsuit accusing a cosmetics company of pressuring them into buying products, a case flagged under keywords including forced sales and the cosmetics brand Coreana. The report, one among several widely read items, highlights an individual consumer complaint that has prompted legal action and public attention to sales practices targeting vulnerable customers.
The article sits within a broader set of disability-related news: efforts to standardize the name of disability registration cards, calls to amend the Basic Livelihood Security Act to break the “poverty trap” undermining disabled workers’ motivation, and ongoing initiatives like weekly audio-described programming. It also notes troubling incidents and legal disputes — from court rulings on discrimination and access denials (such as a wedding venue refusing entry to an electric wheelchair user) to allegations of abuse in care facilities and low employment rates and wages for people with disabilities (employment rate 34%, average monthly pay 2,153,000 won in the cited period).
These developments come as disability-rights legislation advances (including the Disability Rights Guarantee Act and discussion of a Brain Lesion Disability Support Act) and as advocacy groups press for stronger protections for both rights and consumers. The cosmetics lawsuit joins a pattern of cases and policy debates that call for tighter consumer safeguards, clearer anti-discrimination enforcement, and accelerated legislative support to protect people with disabilities in Korea.
Original source: 장애인 ‘화장품 강매 당했다’, 업체 고소 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2018.05.14 19:26 Ahead of local elections, disability-rights lawyer Kim Ye-won argues a simple change — adding candidates’ photos to ballots, as Taiwan does — would make voting far easier for people with developmental disabilities. She criticizes the Public Official Election Act for omitting photos and laments that the same accessibility concerns resurface every election cycle without reform. Kim’s proposal highlights practical, low-cost adjustments that could significantly increase meaningful political participation for disabled voters.
Kim’s own story and work illustrate the stakes. Born with an eye injury, she built a legal career through merit, then founded the Disability Rights Law Center to provide free legal aid to people facing rights violations because of disability. Working with abused, abandoned, and exploited individuals, she documents how legal and institutional gaps — for example, no guaranteed state-appointed counsel in many disability abuse cases — leave vulnerable people without recourse. Her center operates with minimal resources yet addresses severe, long-standing injustices.
Rather than one-off charity or paternalistic “fix-it” approaches, Kim urges sustained, empowering assistance: trained supporters who provide information and accompaniment so disabled people can make their own decisions. She warns against treating disabled people as passive objects of protection and calls for systemic reforms and continuous local support to secure rights and dignity. Her message is both practical and moral: inclusive changes and steady help now protect everyone, because anyone can become vulnerable.
Kim Ye-won has been named the inaugural recipient of the Kwak Jeong-suk Human Rights Award, established to honor the late activist and former lawmaker who devoted her life to disability rights. The award committee recognized Kim for her tireless legal support in disability rights cases. Though born with a medical accident that cost her vision in one eye, Kim says she did not set out to be a disability-rights lawyer; her path shifted after handling disability-rights cases at a public-interest foundation and later at the Seoul Disability Rights Center.
Her career includes a landmark 2014 Supreme Court victory that recognized damage to a prosthetic leg as an occupational injury, and years of public-interest work defending invisible and systemic discrimination. In 2017 she founded the nonprofit Disability Rights Law Center, providing free legal services and refusing fees and donations to prioritize clients who might otherwise remain unheard. Kim has taken on difficult cases—from long-term labor exploitation where courts sometimes award minimal compensation, to the underreported sexual violence faced by disabled women—and consistently emphasizes that disability rights encompass more than mobility: they include information access, cultural participation, and full civic equality.
Known for describing herself as someone whose “personality became her profession,” Kim pursues justice by asking difficult questions and empowering clients to reclaim their voices. She finds reward not only in legal wins but in witnessing survivors grow stronger and recognize they are not to blame. A mother expecting her third child and still actively providing legal support in late pregnancy, Kim frames the award as encouragement to continue steady, long-term work rather than as an endpoint: she hopes simply to keep doing this work for years to come.
Original source: 장애인 인권 위한 그녀의 소걸음 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2018.03.30 05:20 Kim Ye-won, a 36-year-old lawyer and the first recipient of the Gwak Jeong-sook Human Rights Award, runs the Disability Rights Law Center in Korea and dedicates her practice to clients who cannot afford legal representation. Honored in the name of a late disability rights activist, Kim says the award both humbles and motivates her to continue strengthening legal protection for people with disabilities.
Her involvement began by chance while working at the Dongcheon Foundation in 2012 and deepened after handling high-profile cases, including prosecuting embezzlement of disabled residents’ benefits and securing a Supreme Court ruling that recognized a damaged prosthetic as a work-related injury. In January last year she launched the one-person Disability Rights Law Center to provide legal aid to unrepresented disabled people, children with disabilities, women, and people with mental disabilities, and to push for systemic change through research and education.
Kim highlights urgent needs beyond litigation: rescuing abused disabled people and ensuring post-rescue support, identifying and aiding vulnerable disabled children, advancing deinstitutionalization, and making civic participation accessible. She argues for pragmatic reforms—such as including candidate photos and party logos on ballots, as in Taiwan—so people who cannot read can still vote independently. Above all, she believes change comes from awareness and familiarity, and sees measurable progress as society grows more accustomed to the presence and rights of people with disabilities.
2015.12.14 09:39 article At a recent training hosted by the Korean Bar Association, Kim Ye-won, team leader and attorney at the Seoul Disability Human Rights Center, highlighted the everyday ways people with disabilities face hidden discrimination. She cited concrete examples—students denied admission because there are no special classes, buildings accessible only by stairs, and refusals to provide reasonable accommodations—and stressed that such barriers are widespread despite existing laws.
Kim reviewed the Disability Discrimination Prevention and Remedies Act, which forbids discrimination across employment, education, goods and services, legal/administrative procedures, voting, family and welfare, health care, and protections for women and children with disabilities. In practice, however, discrimination persists through cost-cutting hiring practices, sexual harassment, lack of accessibility, and various abuses in residential facilities (assault, sexual violence, embezzlement, neglect, and violations of autonomy). She recommended remedies including reporting to the Seoul Disability Human Rights Center (1644-0420), filing complaints with the National Human Rights Commission (1331), and pursuing civil or criminal litigation when appropriate.
For institutions and facility operators, Kim advised documenting confirmed abuses, taking disciplinary action, requesting investigations by human rights bodies or local centers, and providing prevention training to all staff. She also urged consulting relevant officials by phone or email when situations are unclear. Kim closed with a reminder that disability is exacerbated by a non-inclusive society and called for removing social discrimination that makes life harder for people with disabilities. Other speakers at the session included Park Kim Young-hee and attorney Lee Sang-min.
Original source: “장애인 불편하게 만드는 사회적 차별 방지해야” (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2014.12.02 19:12 article Recent reporting highlights that community-based disability rights advocacy in Korea is struggling to keep up with systemic problems. Local centers and organizations play a vital role—documenting abuses, supporting complaints, and raising public awareness—but face resource constraints, overlapping responsibilities, and legal blind spots that limit their effectiveness.
Practical issues underscore the problem: the government has moved to standardize the name of disability documents under a single “disability registration card,” but broader policy failures remain. Low employment rates (around 34%) and modest average monthly wages (approximately 2,153,000 KRW) reflect a poverty trap that undermines work incentives. High-profile discrimination cases, rising legal claims, and persistent human-rights violations show that advocacy alone can’t substitute for stronger legal protections and social supports.
Advocates are calling for urgent legislative and structural reforms — including passage of comprehensive disability-rights legislation and targeted laws such as support for people with brain lesions — alongside better funding, clearer mandates for local centers, and coordinated national oversight. Strengthening legal remedies, updating the Basic Livelihood Security framework, and improving service delivery are presented as immediate priorities to turn advocacy gains into durable rights and inclusion.
Original source: 지역밀착형 장애인권리옹호 서비스 ‘한계’ (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
2013.12.13 19:02 article People with developmental disabilities are being left out of broadcast information accessibility efforts. While Korean news highlights measures for sensory disabilities—such as captioning and audio description—developmental needs like simplified language, easy-read formats, and tailored presentation are often overlooked. This gap creates a ‘‘blind spot’’ in public information environments where those with cognitive and communication differences cannot reliably access news, emergency announcements, or civic information.
Recent policy moves show both progress and persistent gaps. Items in the news include standardizing the name of disability registration documents, weekly audio-description programming schedules, and the approach of broader disability-rights legislation; yet socioeconomic indicators—like a 34% employment rate and modest average monthly wages—underscore ongoing vulnerability. Court and discrimination cases cited in coverage further reveal enforcement and implementation weaknesses that leave many without effective remedies.
Closing the gap will require coordinated action from broadcasters, regulators, and disability advocates. Practical steps include introducing easy-read and pictorial content, plain-language audio tracks, consistent audio description and captioning standards, proactive monitoring, and meaningful participation of people with developmental disabilities in design and policy decisions. These measures would improve information access, protect rights, and support fuller social and civic inclusion for a frequently overlooked population.
Original source: 방송 정보접근 사각지대에 놓인 발달장애인 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
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 April 26–27, lawyer Kim Yewon of the Center for the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities publicly criticized the 검수완박 (complete removal of prosecutors’ investigative powers) bill passed by a National Assembly subcommittee. She flagged a clause limiting prosecutors to investigating only facts “within the same scope” as those transferred from police, calling it a “fatal poison clause,” and urged lawmakers to remove that restriction at least for prosecutors’ supplementary investigations.
Using 20 concrete examples, Kim illustrated how the identicality restriction would block investigations that develop beyond the original charge: a child-abuse probe that uncovers sexual crimes; a stalker’s phone revealing child sexual exploitation material; small fraud cases that reveal hundreds of victims or a far larger Ponzi scheme; identifying ringleaders while investigating low-level money collectors; confessions or evidence of additional thefts, murders or bribery uncovered during unrelated probes; and cases where criminal leads point to espionage, cross-border technology leakage, or organized drug manufacture and distribution. She warned these limits would prevent prosecutors from following logical investigative leads even when public safety or national security is at stake.
Kim’s examples underline a broader concern that the proposed law could create investigative gaps, impede accountability, and complicate responses to evolving criminal networks. Her plea frames the restriction not as a technicality but as a substantive risk to effective law enforcement, pressing lawmakers to amend the bill to preserve prosecutors’ ability to pursue related or newly revealed offenses during supplementary investigations.
Kim Ye-won, a 31-year-old attorney with the Dongcheon public-interest foundation of law firm Taepyungyang, has become a prominent and relentless advocate for people with disabilities. Known for warm empathy with victims and fierce advocacy in court, she is leading appeals and civil claims in high-profile abuse cases, including the Wonju disability-facility scandal where a man who posed as a pastor abused and exploited dozens of residents. Kim criticizes the initial sentence as too lenient, is representing victims in family-registration corrections and related suits, and works closely with rescued residents as they recover from long-term trauma.
Her drive to become a lawyer came from personal experience: she lost sight in one eye due to a birth-related medical accident and was shocked by the lack of redress and apology. That experience shaped her focus on medical negligence and structural discrimination. Kim recounts everyday barriers she’s faced, such as being denied a license upgrade because of one-eye vision rules, and organized advocacy that helped prompt a legislative proposal to allow individualized assessments for licensing. She emphasizes practical reforms over blanket restrictions, citing international precedents that permit driving with one good eye under evaluation.
Beyond individual cases, Kim is pushing systemic change: she champions a Protection & Advocacy (P&A) model to enable rapid, local intervention in abuse or rights violations, and contributes to civil society reporting ahead of Korea’s UN CRPD review. She views the law as a tool to create faster, safer social change and argues disability rights are everyone’s issue—because anyone can become disabled and society benefits when all members are protected and included.
Not all rulings advanced rights: a notable “obstacle” decision by the Seoul High Court declined to treat derogatory remarks by members of the National Assembly as actionable insult or discrimination, reasoning the remarks were not directed at identifiable individuals and applying strict standards for ‘social evaluation’ harms. Disability advocates criticized this approach for effectively measuring discrimination by criminal-law thresholds and weakening the enforcement of anti-discrimination protections. The report underscores the need for continued strategic litigation and legislative or administrative reform to translate these judicial advances into broader, everyday accessibility and to counter rulings that limit the reach of anti-discrimination law.
The Korea Association of Welfare Facilities for the Disabled (한국장애인복지시설협회, HanJangHyeop) held a high-profile ethics pledge ceremony at its recent general meeting, attended by more than 350 facility directors. The event was organized in response to recent controversies involving some disability welfare facilities and aimed to correct public misperceptions by reaffirming the sincere dedication of frontline staff. Association president Kim Kwang-sik stressed the need to protect staff reputation and rebuild public trust through a clear, collective commitment to professional ethics.
The association’s ethics code, written into its bylaws, comprises 17 articles centered on protecting the dignity and rights of persons with disabilities and safeguarding staff rights. Key provisions include respect for dignity and self-determination, prohibition of discrimination across all human-rights domains, obligations to support community engagement, protection of employee professionalism and labor rights, and strict adherence to anti-corruption laws that bar seeking improper benefits.
At the ceremony directors read the full ethics code aloud and pledged strict compliance. The association declared it will follow up with practical measures — including education and support — to ensure the code is actively implemented in daily operations. Leaders said the pledge is intended to serve as a firm foundation for ethical, transparent management of disability welfare services and to restore confidence in the sector’s professional integrity.
Ulsan Gangbuk Education Support Office has formed the 2026 Gangbuk Disability Student Human Rights Support Team to strengthen protection and prevention of rights violations for students with disabilities. The initiative aims to activate on-the-ground support in schools and create safer, more inclusive learning environments that promote the well-being and happiness of disabled students.
The support team is composed of 17 regional experts led by the head of the elementary education division, including representatives from schools, the developmental disability support center, disability rights advocacy organizations, a parents’ association, a sexual violence counseling center, disability welfare services, and the local police. The group will conduct monthly visits to institutions across the area, carry out prevention and counseling activities, and prioritize protection of affected students. When rights violations occur, the team will provide immediate protection for victims and offer special support measures for both victims and involved students.
Officials held an appointment ceremony and coordination meeting on February 26 to discuss operational direction and detailed plans. Key agenda items included identifying “Thebom” students (those who have experienced or are at risk of rights violations), assigning roles to committee members, and building an integrated support system to diversify and improve effectiveness. The Gangbuk Education Support Office emphasized strengthening multi-agency, organic cooperation to ensure students’ rights are protected and to foster a culture of empathy toward disability in schools.
A specialized coach training program to support the independent living of people with spinal cord injuries was held at the Ramada Yongin Hotel from the 10th to the 12th of last month. Supported by Gyeonggi-do and hosted by the Korea Spinal Cord Injury Association (Gyeonggi branch), the annual course aims to cultivate professional staff who can help early-stage or socially isolated spinal cord injury patients return to community life.
Graduates of the program will provide one-on-one peer counseling, guidance on healthy acceptance of disability, daily living coaching, and information to promote social participation. These services are designed to lower trainees’ reliance on family members and personal aides, and to support them in leading more autonomous, self-directed lives.
Hello? from other side~
The practical, field-centered curriculum covered disability welfare policy, communication skills, disability rights, psychological stress management, and rehabilitation exercise, delivered by expert instructors. The association says the initiative will strengthen on-the-ground support for independence each year and expand practical systems to help reclusive and newly injured individuals reintegrate into society.
Original source: [용인신문] 척수장애인 자립지원 ‘코치양성교육’ (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
