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.

Original source: “소수자에 대한 관심 늘어나 반갑지만 수명 짧아 아쉬워” [피플앤스토리] (Source: the news outlet; please refer to the original article.)