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.)
