ECCLESIA IN ASIA Seoul, the Archbishop with families concerned about the closure of institutions for the disabled

In South Korea, there is a debate on how to overcome the large residential structures that still house 25,000 people. Parents fear that their children will lose the care and attention they need. Monsignor Peter Chung Soon-taick: “Disabilities are not all the same. We have to see which is the most appropriate solution for each one”.

Seoul () – How can we really offer care, assistance and dignity to people with a severe form of disability? It is an issue that South Korea has been trying to resolve for some years, looking for new solutions.

Public opinion increasingly rejects the idea of ​​large residential structures built in the 1970s and 1980s to address this problem. The Seoul government has presented a plan for the “deinstitutionalization” of approximately 25,000 people who are still in these residences. For their part, the families of the disabled fear that this path, instead of really being a form of respect for the dignity of the most vulnerable people, will turn out to be an ideological recipe, without adequate alternatives, which will end up abandoning them instead of offering a better attendance.

The Archbishop of Seoul, Msgr. Peter Chung Soon-taick, received a delegation representing 400 families on August 3 to listen personally to their concerns. The prelate has expressed the closeness and availability of the Korean Catholic Church.

“Our society has gone through many changes -he told them- and over time the limits of the large structures for the care of the disabled have been revealed. The need arises then in society to protect the human rights of these people and seek alternative solutions. However, the situations are not all the same, they depend on the type of disability, and the way to approach them as well as the support for families must be different”.

“What is needed – added the prelate – is an open approach, where specific treatments are provided for people with the most severe disabilities. An indiscriminate policy of deinstitutionalization would be absurd. The Church understands and shares the pain that you are experiencing”, Msgr. Chung Soon-taick concluded, accompanying his words with an eloquent hug for the families of the disabled.

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