Ick Seop Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Social Welfare
Yonsei University
1. Introduction
It is my happiness to join with all of you here who are gathered to move the current situation toward "society for all." I hope to share some ideas and experiences with you and ad a little bit to your achievements. However, I would not present an academic lecture, rather, bring some issues necessary for the development of quality of life of all, including persons with disabilities. Since this is a formal seminar, I hope to provide what I am interested in.
2. A Brief Introduction to the Disability Budget in Korea
Government budget means both input and output for relevant action. It is input because budget allows any kind of action to be realized. On the other hand, it stands for the result of efforts to draw an attention from the nation. Therefore, the magnitude of governmental budget can be understood as an indicator of the level of agreement upon the area on which the money will be spent.
Disability budget in Korean government has increased constantly as the society becomes more aware of disability issues than before. The increase might be positive indication anyway as long as the money is spent on disability. However, the proportion of increase needs to be considered critically. In other words, any amount of money added to 0 budget means a great jump in its proportion anyway.
Disability budget of 2000 increased 31% compared to previous year of 1999 to 147,600,000,000 Won. It was only 0.17% of total government budget. It increased a great proportion of 31% compared to previous year but still low to improve the welfare of persons with disabilities. Of total disability budget, 57,900,000,000 Won (about 40%) were allocated in residential institution, whereas 27,900,000,000 Won (about 19%) in non-residential institution. In addition, 770,000,000 Won (about 5%) fell into vocational rehabilitation institution, whereas 380,000,000 won (about 2%) into National Rehabilitation Center. Of the rest, 3,810,000,000 Won (26%) were given to financial assistance for poor with disabilities whereas 1,180,000,000 Won (about 8%) to disability prevention and disability registration.
Quick review on the characteristics in the budget provides the tendency of institutional care or program rather than personal assistance services. As shown above, approximately 60% of total government disability budget fall into institution related area so that disability in Korea still sticks with the issue of institutional care or programs. In addition, budget for residential institution occupies the greatest portion of total one although it decreases steadily since 1990.
3. Measurement of Integration of persons with Disabilities
The issues I would like to bring about today, if allowed, are one related to the integration of persons with disabilities. Especially, the measurement of integration and its comparison within and across countries. As mentioned a little bit earlier, governmental budget represents societal input to achieve a certain purpose. In this sense, disability budget has its own purpose, such as integration of persons with disabilities into society, for example. If we accept the proposition that the societal effort are geared into the achievement of integration, now the actual level of integration achieved remains unanswered. We don't know how much we moved from previous level of integration and where we stand.
It seems possible to think about all the elements that represent the level of integration so that we could try to measure the current level of integration within a nation. However, measurement and comparison at the same time makes it difficult because there are few data comparable among nations even if it could be measured in one nation. The reason that comparison is included in my study is that the level of integration of persons with disabilities has a universal importance or modern society's concern at least.
In order to fulfill both measurement and comparison, we need to develop criteria to measure the integration. In short, the requirements of the study of integration are the development of indicators that represent the level of integration in the manner of simple, measurable, and numeric form. The method which meets the three requirements will be called Disability Integration Index (DII) since it appears to be a simple number and comparable across nations.
4. Middle Stage Report and Discussion
DII research was conducted 1998 in Korea and showed that the level of integration of persons with disabilities into Korean society stood 0.48 where the index runs from 0 to 1. DII was obtained through a formula based on deprivation index which was utilized in Human Development Index by United Nations. Indicators used for DII were 1) deprived level of employment of disability, 2) deprived level of equal education of disability, 3) deprived level of government budget for integration, 4) deprived level of physical environment and 5) deprived level of social attitudes toward persons with disabilities.
5. Attitudes toward Persons with Disabilities
I would like to discuss a little bit about attitudes in terms
of the to measure and its meaning. I want you to give me many
critical comments on the method on its limitations and alternatives.