Reasons Emerge for Korean Disability Activist Park Kyung-Seok’s Deportation at Narita

By Barrier Free Japan

November 26 2024

TOKYO – On November 22nd, a Korean disability activist Park Kyung-Seok was deported from Japan after seven hours at Narita Airport, along with his two caregivers, according to Seto Daisaku, the Executive Director of the ‘Anti-Poverty Network’, a Japan-based Civic Group.

Park was in Japan at the invite of the ‘Anti-Poverty Network’ which had arranged meetings with the families of the victims of the ‘Tsukui Yamayuri En Incident’ as well as meeting with three disabled members of the ‘Reiwa Shinseigumi’ and a meeting to listen to the testimony of an A-bomb survivor in Hiroshima.

The reason given for Park’s deportation was that in South Korea he has received a suspended sentence for violation of the Assemblies and Demonstrations Act in 2012 for attending an illegal demonstration in South Korea and that under Article 5, paragraph 1, paragraph 4 of the Japanese Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act Park could be deported.

However, Park had been allowed to enter Japan in 2016 and in May of this year, at the invitation of Amnesty International, according to Daisaku Seto of the ‘Anti-Poverty Network’.

In March 2023, Park Kyoung-seok 63, as the leader of the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) was arrested in Seoul outside of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency headquarters, where he was holding a press conference, on charges of illegal demonstrations for protesting outside subway stations.

Park and SADD are demanding an increased budget for people with disability and their mobility rights, SADD and staged protests at major subway stations in central Seoul on and off, where wheelchair-bound activists repeatedly boarded and disembarked trains, disrupting metro services during the morning rush hour.