Korean Job Discussion Forums

[OnTheOtherSide]

This is a very strange story. It says that only blind people were allowed to be licensed massueses in Korea? Why? very, very strange....


http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/18/korea.blind.masseurs/index.html


SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Police arrested 26 blind masseurs Thursday after they threatened to jump from a bridge to protest a government decision they say will rob them of their livelihood.


A blind masseur jumps into the Han River to avoid his arrest, as riot police struggle with other protesters.

1 of 2 Some of the men set fire to a car and two jumped off the bridge into Seoul's Han river, the country's national news agency Yonhap said. There were no injuries reported.

The South Korean health ministry recently decided to grant licenses to sighted masseurs and masseuses to practice certain kinds of massages.

Since 1963, the law allowed only blind people to practice the profession, Yonhap said.

The protesters said the new policy puts their jobs at risk. There are about 15,000 licensed masseurs in the country, which has a blind population of 216,000.

"Medical massage is almost the only profession that is open to the blind people. The ministry's decision is threatening our right to live," Shim Wook-seop, one of the protesting masseurs, was quoted as saying.

Another blind masseur, Dong Seong-geun, staged a lone protest in front of the Constitutional Court recently.

"I have a wife and two children to support," he told the New York Times.

"If I lose this job, I will have to beg on the streets. How can taking away one job from people who only have one compare with taking one job away from sighted people who have a hundred jobs to choose from?"

The country's Constitutional Court is expected to rule soon on an appeal filed by several sighted people who argued that the profession cannot be the exclusive domain of the blind.

The Massager Association of Korea, representing 120,000 unlicensed masseurs who are working openly and in defiance of the law, is leading the legal challenge.

The association keeps a file of members accused of practicing without a license. Those people are usually fined between $450 to $4,500, although the law calls for up to three years in prison.

"It breaks my heart when I think that what I am doing every day, what I consider my calling, is a crime," Park Yoon-soo, president of the association, told the NYT.

"We are not trying to steal jobs from the blind. We just want to share the market. We want to live as normal citizens, not as criminals."

[Captain Corea]

[Ya-ta Boy]

I think I read about blind masseuses in the KH years and years ago.
There was a time when parents even blinded a child so he/she could be a masseuse. Something about how our bodies compensate for the loss of one sense by intensifying another one. Here, the sense of touch was deemed better in blind people.

[jkelly80]

I blame Zatoichi.

[Rumple]

It is pretty common all over Asia for blind people to become massage therapists. It is one of the few jobs that doesn't much require sight in order to be effective.

[aboxofchocolates]

[Gaber]

I can understand there concern, every time I see one a blind old begger on the subway it breaks my heart, but surely if they do have the skills, there will be jobs for them.

[Hyeon Een]

[Gaber]

[Fishead soup]

This law doesn't apply to the places offering happy endings.

[flakfizer]

I can see the protest signs now:

"Protect our jobs. We knead to make a living."

[Hyeon Een]

[jackson7]

When I first read your thread title, I thought you made a spelling mistake regarding "masses." I was hoping to read another article about the lemming/sheep mentality of Koreans. That's always funny. Darn.

[OnTheOtherSide]

The great thing about getting a massage from a blind person is that you can get a free happy ending. You just need to fool them into thinking that it's your elbow or fingers or something.

[jkelly80]