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One of our writers, a Korean girl named Kee Hara, returned to her home country during the December holidays to discover that disability sports is more than BIG in Korea.
By Kee Hara
Despite only 3% of the Korean population being disabled, the government is very motivated in providing adequate and relevant facilities for them. The government has installed lifts in most of the subway stations and has built more specialized schools for the disabled. Furthermore, the government now provides wheelchair grants to the disabled in financial difficulties. On the grassroots level, an internet newspaper named ablenews has been set up to provide a virtual place where the disabled can share news and information easily. On top of all these, support for disability sports in Korea has never seemed so high.
The Korean government has always been enthusiastically supporting disabled sports. The annual sporting event for disabled athletes, National Sports Games for the Disabled first started in 1981 and for past 26 years, the Games has provided invaluable opportunities for keen amateurs to showcase their sporting prowess. Moreover, 20 April is the “Day for Disabled Persons”. Around 4000 people participate every year in the National Stadium in special programmes such as wheelchair basketball tournaments and sign language courses.
Recently, the Korean government started to play an even more active role in disabled sports. Its effort can be seen from the establishment of KOSAD (Korea Sports Association for the Disabled) under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in November 2005. KOSAD supervises various national and local games for the disabled and also encourages the participation of the able-bodied. KOSAD has published a 2007 calendar featuring Korean national disabled athletes, including Hong Suk Man, the national wheelchair racer who set a new world record in the 2004 Paralympics in Athens.
Hong Suk Man has not been able to use the lower half of his body since he was three. He actually started his sporting career by playing table tennis before he changed to wheelchair racing. Not being able to afford the wheelchair specially designed for racing, he trained himself with his normal wheelchair. However, when he unexpectedly won the 1995 Daegu Wheelchair Marathon, he was sponsored with a proper wheelchair and thus began his professional career as a wheelchair racer. Within 9 years, he set the world record for 200m wheelchair race in the Paralympics. This phenomenal achievement was a result of his perseverance together with the support from his people.
In Korea, interactions between the able-bodied and the disabled are encouraged. Kang Won Rae, a member of a famous dancing duo in Korea, was wheelchair-bound after a traffic accident in 2000 but he returned to his career by creating wheelchair dance choreography. This has definitely improved people’s perception of the disabled. However, continuous support would be still essential to further reduce discrimination and to promote mutual understanding.
Our Singaporean wheelchair racer, Mohd Firdaus Bin Nordin raced aside Hong Suk Man during the 2006 IPC Athletics Word Championships in Netherlands last August. He won the silver medal in 200M wheelchair race (T53 category) and earned an entry slot into the Beijing 2008 Paralympics. Hong Suk Man won the bronze medal then.
In the 9th FESPIC Games held recently, Firdaus met Hong Suk Man yet again in his events, and this time, Suk Man took the lead.
The next time Firdaus meets Suk Man again will be in the Beijing 2008 Paralympics. That will be an match you don’t want to miss.