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.
Original source: [서소정이 만난 사람]”‘장애인 변호’ 월 20만원 벌지만 행복 (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)
