Disability advocacy group attacked by haters posing as new members

An activist from Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) in a wheelchair participates in a protest for mobility rights at City Hall Station on Seoul Metro Line 2, April 21. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Lee Hae-rin

A civic group that has launched daily protests for the mobility rights of people with disabilities has faced a massive harassment campaign from people espousing hate while pretending to apply for membership in the organization.

Activists of the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) told The Korea Times, Wednesday, that over 240 people joined the group en masse as new official members on April 22, all within an hour starting around 8 p.m.

SADD executive director Kim Phill-soon said that many of the new members filled out their membership applications with hate speech in place of personal details. For example, some filled out the name field with words like "Eugenics," used phrases like "Bank of a society with no disabled people" as the names of their banks for paying membership fees and "chemical castration" for the account holders' names.

One fake new member even wrote, "People with disabilities should all go to gas chambers. Thank you for making me study eugenics and stop helping innocent disabled people who don't disturb people on their morning way to work," Kim said.

She added that some people also included hate speech regarding gender equality and the former presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, Lee Jae-myung, in lieu of their personal information. "Their hatred is clearly targeted towards specific groups of people," Kim said.

However, they didn't donate any actual money, as the website's donation deposit system is manually operated and the new members' banking information was all random and false, the SADD official in charge of membership donations confirmed.

"In the past, we encountered several people who expressed their hatred through donations ― for instance, depositing 18 won ($0.01) 18 times," Kim said. The number 18 sounds similar to a Korean swear word and thus a donation of 18 won given 18 times shows opposition rather than support.

"But we've never been harassed at this scale through our membership's cash management service, so we were very shocked," said Kim.

The activists stopped reading the hate comments left by the fake members, instead archiving them for future use to investigate the people who created them. According to Kim, the group needs media attention but worries that publicizing the harassment campaign might trigger copycat hate crimes against other socially vulnerable groups.

As the activist group's protests continue, its members face increasing hate speech, as well as violent physical attacks in real life as well.

"They are mostly young men in their 20s, targeting female activists," Kim said. She gave an example of a man who broke into their office to yell abusive and hateful words, and also mentioned that some people have been following the activists with menacing stares after their protests.

The group asked the police to increase patrols near its headquarters in downtown Seoul and conducted an internal survey among activists on any psychological trauma they have faced as well as their needs for mental health counseling.

SADD has been holding daily morning protests in Seoul's subway since last December, including head-shaving ceremonies this month, demanding government approval for a budget related to their rights to move around equitably.

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