World Human Rights Cities Forum 2014 -- Day 2

Group shot after Opening Session on May 16

Today was the second full day at the World Human Rights Cities Forum in Gwangju, South Korea.  The morning started with breakfast, where I sat down next to a man who is a participant in the conference.  I've never been much of a talker, but I did my best to start some conversation with him.  We had met briefly the evening before on the elevator.  My conversation attempts fell flat though.  While we sat, he got four times in a short space of minutes to get more food at the buffet.  It's not like he filled the plate each time, but he got up a lot.  The fifth time he got up, he didn't return.  He left without saying good bye. 

I'll let it go.  At the Plenary Session that morning, he was a speaker.  Maybe his mind was on his speech.  The morning was Welcoming Sessions and Plenary Session.  The afternoon was another plenary session, a break out group, and an informal meeting of disability groups and advocates.

It's interesting to travel half way around the world and hear things that mimic issues in the United States.  In the morning session, a woman spoke the Brazil 2016 Olympics, and the displacement of people to make way from the construction of stadiums.  The city now has thousands more homeless people while there are hundreds of thousands of unoccupied housing units.  This was like Chicago during the 2016 Bid.  Groups opposed to the bid warned of the same displacement issues, and in Chicago there is an issue of unoccupied Chicago Housing Authority Units.  In the afternoon, I sat in on part of a session called Cities and Violence, which privatization as a form of violence.  A woman from Japan talked about the privatization of the Japanese workforce, how more and more the ranks of full-time employees are giving way to part-time contractual workers.  The contractual workers struggle more and more to earn a living because companies are low balling bids in order to land the contracts.  Similar to stories I hear in the United States about contractual workers.  And in the meeting with the disability community, stories out of Korea and Brazil regarding transportation, health care assistance and design echoed the United States. 

Bus Protest in Seoul, South Korea on April 20

One of the best parts of the day was meeting up again with a man named Kyung-seok Park, an advocate who visited Chicago and Access Living in 2002.  He runs a group called Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination.  They've led successful campaign against inaccessible transit in South Korea, and now work on transportation, asset, and personal assistant issues.  Last month they protested against the inaccessibility of bus lines that run between cities in Korea.  They staged the protest on April 20, which is Disabled Persons Day in South Korea.  The police were waiting for them with pepper spray. 

The working relationship between SADD and the Independent Living Centers in Korea appear to be similar to that between Access Living and ADAPT.  ADAPT does more of the civil disobedience, direct action work, while Access Living supports ADAPT's effort and works more through legislative and legal channels.

Tomorrow afternoon I give my presentation on Independent Living in Chicago. 

Day one in Gwangju, South Korea

Gwangju South Korea.  Picture taken from Pedestrian Overpass.

I arrived in Gwangju, South Korea on Wednesday, after a 13-hour flight from Chicago to Seoul, a bus ride across Seoul, and a one-hour flight from Seoul to Gwangju. During the 13 hour flight, I used the restroom four times, which seems kind of reasonable for such a long flight.  Luckily, I had an aisle seat.  The two people to my left used the bathroom one time each.  One time each?


I am in Gwangju for the World Human Rights Cities Forum.  The Forum was launched in 2011 to connect cities across the globe committed to human rights.  Gwangju has history of peace and democracy.  Most recently, in 1980, students led a democracy movement to
                                                                                       protest against what at

Talking about bus accessibility during tour of Gwangju

the time was a military dictatorship in South Korea.  The movement was shattered by violence.  Many students were killed by government soldiers. The event is known at the 5-18 Movement, because the events happened on May 18.  While I am here, there will be local ceremonies to honor the event and the students.

I've been invited to speak about Disability Rights and Independent Living.  Yesterday, my first full day in Korea, I was taken on a tour to study some of the access features in Gwangju.  One of the coolest visits along the tour was to the new baseball stadium, called KIA Tiger Stadium.  The stadium follows Universal Design and before construction began the architects invited members of the disability community to give input on the features of the stadium.

KIA Tiger Stadium