NHRC President Kim October Visits Include:
Seoul Station Shantytown and Shelter for Teen Runaways
Once or twice a month, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) President Chang-Kuk Kim takes the time to be in the field, examining from the ground up the places where human rights are violated and defended. The goals behind organizing these visits are to enable President Kim: to ascertain in detail the human rights realities faced by the vulnerable and the minorities in our society, to hear the views and opinions of NGOs and other people dealing with human rights issues on the ground level directly, and to pro-actively work towards enriching NHRC activities to reflect, ever more accurately, the realities at the grassroots level.
On October 23rd, President Kim visited a shantytown (located in Huam-dong, Jung-gu District) near the central train station, Seoul Station, in downtown Seoul, and on the 29th he will visit the “Community for Wildflowers to Bloom,” (hereafter, Wildflower Community) a shelter and educational center for teen runaways (located in Ansan City, Gyeonggi Province).
From his visit to the shantytown, President Kim was able to talk with people on the ground level about the actual conditions of the shantytown and issues arising thereof, as well as the current situation of elderly Koreans without family and other alienated strata of society. For his visit to the Wildflower Community, President Kim plans to speak words of encouragement to the teachers/social workers and youth of the shelter, listen to the teenagers talk about their troubles and the difficulties they have been through, and share dialogue with the teenagers and the teachers living together in this group home that functions as an alternative family.
For future visits, President Kim is planning on: going to shelters for children and youth, migrant workers in Korea, disabled persons and the aged; pay direct visits to incarceration facilities for women and persons in military service; and continuously seek out the marginalized in our society to hear the socially vulnerable and the minority talk about their human rights issues in person.
