Disabled Beggars

I hate to see disabled people begging.  Everyone can do something to earn a living.  Begging is lazy and removes one’s dignity.  2014

I wrote the above when I began to notice people who were blind or deaf begging on trains.  Or lame men dragging themselves on makeshift skateboards at the farmer’s market begging for money.  I now realize that I was looking at things with very Western eyes.  To many in Korea, having a disabled child is considered shameful, so most of these babies end up in orphanages.  In fact, I read that the vast majority of children in the country’s many orphanages have at least one living parent.  Aside from disabled children, orphanages are full of able bodied children who simply had the misfortune of being born inconvenient.   

Most orphanages just house, feed, clothe children and send them to school.  Once they come of age, they’re on their own with no skills to help them survive out in the world.  Since students are tracked very early on, university is just a dream for a child without parents to push and encourage them.  And in Korea, many job applications ask for what amounts to a brief genealogy.  Since orphans are stigmatized by society, once an employer sees their application, they don’t even have a chance at getting an interview.  Moon Jae-in, the current president, is working to stop the practice of requiring applicants’ family histories as well as photos.  If able bodied people who grow up without parents have it so difficult, imagine a person with a disability who never got any sort of skills training.  At least some able bodied orphans manage to eke out a living doing odd jobs of unskilled labor.  

In the U.S. I have a friend who is blind who has held several jobs.  His first job was loading dishwashers in a restaurant.  When we met he sewed duffel bags for a company subcontracted by the military.  He lives in his own apartment, pays all his bills and doesn’t rely on any type of charity.  Of course, this is because he was able to get job training which helped make him employable.  People can do as much as they are able if they have the right support.  That concept is very new here.  In fact, Koreans are shocked that people with disabilities even marry and have families of their own in the West. 

Things are changing slowly.  Once in a while a see a woman out with her visibly disabled child, which means that some families are keeping their disabled children.  Not an easy feat in a society that still has far to go in their attitudes and way of thinking toward such people.  

I now understand that, in most cases, begging is not lazy.  It’s often the only means of survival in a place that doesn’t afford any chances to people who are different.