By Cho Jae-hyon
City Editor
He sells packs of chewing gum on the street. If it’s not a rainy day, he can be spotted every afternoon on the corner of the entrance to the Myeongdong commercial district in central Seoul.
Park Sang-sin, 46, has been selling gum for about 16 years there, sitting on a tiny stool right beside the roads crowded with vehicles emitting exhaust gas and blaring, ear-splitting horns.
The only thing that soothes his monotonous work hours is some folk music coming from an old, black transistor radio that he puts on a bag beside him. In front of him are a notebook, a pencil and several boxes of gum.
At first sight, he doesn’t look normal ― he is mentally retarded. He has been rated at disability grade 1 by a hospital. His face is skewed and he walks with a limp.
I’ve recently struck up an acquaintance with him as I often buy gum from him. I eventually chatted with him and had the opportunity for a glimpse at his life.
It’s hard to grasp what he says. You need to get close to listen to him as he cannot pronounce words articulately. He always smiles when he talks.
Park comes to his workplace, the corner of the sidewalk leading to Myeongdong Cathedral, at around noon. He commutes by a call taxi that operates for the disabled, paying about 6,000 won for a round trip, which is a lot of money for him.
He says he earns about 800,000 won a month. He buys gum from another vendor at wholesale prices, which means the margin from selling the gum is small.
If all the costs, including meals and taxi charges, are counted, his net earnings will be far smaller. He lives with his 70-year-old mother who has several chronic diseases in a flat registered under her mother’s name. She has recently been hospitalized due to backache, from which she has suffered for a long time.
He sounds like a filial son. He said he recently gave 200,000 won as a gift to his mother for her 70th birthday, though his mother used the money to buy him a new mobile phone.
He proudly showed off the phone to me. A discount mobile phone rate is the only benefit he gets as a disabled man.
Even though he has the highest disability grade, he receives no state subsidies at all.
He has applied for some from the government but to no avail. The fact that he lives in a flat owned by his mother and he has two younger sisters who work are disqualifying factors for him to receive state aid.
The government has recently started paying pensions to the disabled ― but to be entitled to them is very hard, if not impossible.
When I told him to apply for the pension, he was already aware that applications for any state aid would be futile. Still, he along with his younger sister recently visited a ward office to have his case reviewed.
The verdict was ― no. He said the officials told him that those who can walk won’t be entitled to the pension. He quoted them as saying that the pension pool is not big and only those who cannot answer nature’s call on their own will be among those who will see any payment.
He said it’s “dirty” to get money from the government. “It’s a lot better for me to earn it, no matter how hard it is, than expecting any from the government,” he said.
He saves money from his earnings. For every 10,000 won he earns, he sets aside 1,000 won and puts it in a piggy bank at home.
In the notebook, folded in half, he writes numbers. Whenever he sells a pack of gum, he adds a figure. It’s laborious for him to write the numbers which look like a code that is hard to decipher.
This summer, he couldn’t come to work for weeks because of the heavy rain. To make up for that, he came out to sell gum on all the three days of the Chuseok holiday in September. No summer holidays or weekends for him.
He does not have many memories of traveling. He said he visited Gyeongbok Palace along with his mother one weekend last month and had a good time there. He previously asked me whether Gwanghwamun, the main gate of the palace, was really restored, boasting a disabled person can enter such tour sites for free.
His tale is a case in point indicating that most of the disabled are still very much uncared for by the government. He said his dream is living with his mother happily without worry. The government needs to listen harder to his humble dream.
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