“Whose city is Seoul? Is it a city only for those who walk fast? A city only for those who speak fast? I am not a candidate only for people with disabilities. I want to pursue politics needed by everyone who has ever been pushed out of this city.”

Cho Sang-Ji, 48, an independent preliminary candidate for the Seoul Metropolitan Council in Jongno Constituency No. 2, said this in an interview on the 6th via augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).

Cho is a woman with a severe brain-lesion disability who left an institution in 2008. She lived 15 years inside an institution and 17 years outside. Now that the time she has spent outside is longer in her life, she has stepped forward to directly represent the city where she lives. It has been 12 years since a person with a severe disability who uses an AAC device ran for a local council seat, following Labor Party candidate Kim Ju-Hyun in 2014.

Cho stated, “I ran to ask again who will represent this area where people with disabilities live, and this city where they move, work, and build relationships.” She said, “People with disabilities have long been imagined only in proportional representation seats, in symbolic positions,” and “I wanted to show that people with disabilities are citizens who live in local communities and can be political actors who represent their areas.”

Having lived as a disability rights activist since deinstitutionalization, Cho has taken part several times in the mobility-rights protests of the National Solidarity for the Elimination of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities (Jeon Jang Yeon). She also participated in the Seoul City customized public jobs program for persons with severe disabilities, but lost her job when Seoul Mayor Oh Se-Hoon completely cut the related budget in 2024, making her a dismissed worker.

Cho’s diverse lived experiences as an affected party are fully reflected in her pledges. She has put forward as key pledges the restoration and institutionalization of public jobs for persons with severe disabilities; the restoration of the ordinance supporting deinstitutionalization and the guarantee of the right to deinstitutionalization; and the guarantee of mobility rights for people with disabilities. She said, “Until now, the lives of people with disabilities have too often been explained by others,” adding, “I am a candidate who will engage in politics directly. A survivor of an institution, someone living in the community, someone who speaks through AAC, someone who has had the rights to mobility and work taken awaysuch a person will enter the council directly.”

Because she belongs to the Deinstitutionalized Disabled Party, which is not a registered political party, Cho is running as an independent. Under the current Political Parties Act, to found a party one must secure more than 1,000 members for each city/province chapter. Disability activists who focused on publicizing their policies during the 2021 Seoul mayoral by-election now plan to field the candidate Cho Sang-Ji and complete the 6·3 local elections.

Instead of shaking many hands and giving loud speeches, Cho communicates through AAC with a synthesized voice and moves through sit-ins and protest sites in a power wheelchair. After finishing the interview that day, she joined a march to demand the restoration of public jobs for persons with severe disabilities. Standing at the very back of the procession, she repeatedly moved and stopped as she steered the joystick of her power wheelchair.

Although it took 50 minutes for her to leave the sit-in site at City Hall Station, transfer twice by elevator, and reach the Seoul Regional Employment and Labor Office, Cho said, “For my campaign, direction matters more than speed.”

She said that “talking more about rights” is her goal in this election. Cho said, “The rights of people with disabilities are not a matter only for people with disabilities. It is a question of whether Seoul can become a city that leaves no one behind,” adding, “The right not to be confined in institutions, the right to move, the right to work, the right to speak, and the right to live together in the community are, in the end, everyone’s rights.”