People in wheelchairs staged a protest on Monday at metro stations in Seoul to demonstrate their right to mobility. 

Some 50 disabled people gathered at Singil, Seoul and City Hall Stations on Line No. 1 in the afternoon, and collectively boarded a train from Singil and traveled five stops to Seoul Station, then reboarded the train to get off at the next stop, City Hall, where they held a press conference calling for a meeting with Mayor Park Won-soon. 

The protest coincided with the inauguration day of the third time mayor, so that the city government will heed the plea of the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination for all stairlifts or platform lifts in Seoul Metro to be changed to elevators, an SADD representative explained to the local media.

The protest was held for about an hour between 2:50 p.m. and 4 p.m. Trains were delayed for approximately 40 minutes due to their boarding, which proved the inefficiency of the metro system here that does not allow the disabled to move about the city freely. 

In October, 2017, a man with a disability died while using the stairlift at Singil Station, as he was changing lines from Line No. 1 to No. 5. The man, surnamed Han, had fallen in the process of using the lift and tumbled down the staircase. He died from the injury. The incident triggered the SADD to initiate a movement to enhance the disabled persons’ right to mobility.

SADD held a similar protest on June 14. 

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)