Blind masseuses in life-or-death protest ahead of landmark ruling By

SEOUL, Sept 11 (Yonhap) - Instead of going to his massage parlor these days, Shim Wook-seop, 38, travels to the Mapo Bridge spanning the Han River to join scores of other blind people who eat and sleep there to protest a pending court ruling that could take away their only jobs.

His wife, also blind, is home alone, taking care of their two children. Income
has been almost nil for weeks.

"If I give up on this protest because life's hard now, I can become an
incapable, useless person forever," Shim said, squatting on the bridge's
sidewalk alongside rushing cars.

For Shim and tens of thousands of blind masseuses in the country, the urgency
comes from the fear of losing their exclusive -- and almost only -- profession
called "anma," or medical massage, ahead of a landmark ruling. The
Constitutional Court is set to rule on whether it is constitutional to grant the
vocation exclusively to the blind, as is Korea's centuries-old custom.

Several non-blind people have filed an appeal to scrap the affirmative action,
arguing it violates their freedom of occupational choice. The case, watchers say,
poses a serious question for Korean society: How much should it protect a
minority's interest when it conflicts with the majority's right to choose?

"It is a question of where we should draw the line," Kim Bok-gi, a
spokesman for the Constitutional Court, said.

"How should our society arbitrate when there's a conflict between non-blind
people's right to choose a vocation and blind people's right to live?" he
said.

Apart from judicial deliberations, it's a life-or-death issue for the visually
impaired. Two people recently jumped into the river, one of them is now
hospitalized for broken ribs, and a masseuses' organization leader took sleeping
pills in a suicide attempt.

Shim, who lost his sight from glaucoma at 11 and has eked out a living as a
masseuse since age 22, says blind people simply have no other choice. They once
trained as piano tuners or telemarketers as alternatives, but few managed to earn
a living in the limited markets. Shim believes competition with the sighted
simply incapacitates them.

"Whether I'm apt to do this job is out of the question," he said,
"We can't afford to choose. My hands got swollen at the beginning and I
didn't like this. Some clients were annoying. But if I don't do this, I become a
useless man."

According to welfare ministry data, only 15,000 blind people out of 216,000
across the country are employed as medical masseuses, while there are virtually
no other options.

"As far as I know, there's no other profession the government is currently
considering as alternatives. It's even more difficult for the blind to find
employers than people with other handicaps," Lee Yong-il, a ministry
official handling livelihood issues for the disabled, said.

Korea's affirmative action policy for the blind is a deep-rooted tradition dating
back to the 13th century, when the Joseon Dynasty protected their vocational
rights by training them as fortunetellers and acupuncturists, according to
"The Study on the History of the Blind's Profession in Korea" by a
specialist on the disabled, Lim Ahn-soo. The practice took its modern form in the
early 1910s, when the Japanese colonial government occupying Korea introduced
Japan's educational system to the country to issue massage certificates to the
blind.

But the exclusive system faced growing challenges in recent years as non-blind
people pushed for their occupational freedom on the wave of growing public
attention to individual rights. The movement gained momentum amid concerns that
many massage parlors were entwined with the sex trade, and that Korea lacked
therapies like Thailand and China to attract foreign tourists.

The move was once upheld in court. In 2003, a group of four non-blind,
unregistered sports masseuses filed a constitutional petition against the
blind-only occupation law, and the court ruled in favor of them.

But the National Assembly promptly offset the decision, legislating the
affirmative action policy through a higher law. The sports masseuses filed a
petition again, which now awaits the court's ruling.

For many, the blind's street protests are heart-wrenching.

"Blind people are somehow the weaker of our society. But they are forced to
take to the streets to secure their livelihoods," Kim Ki-cheol, a teacher at
Seoul National School for the Blind, who is also blind, said during a recent
protest where he came with his students.

"It could be nothing for the non-blind people, but we can't freely walk. We
are no match for competition. That is not being understood," he said.