One out of 11 households has disabled family members

One out of every 11 households includes family members with disabilities, a recent survey showed. Moreover, the majority of handicapped people were found to have obtained their disabilities in traffic mishaps or industrial accidents or from preventable diseases.

According to the survey, conducted last year by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) at the request of the Health and Welfare Ministry, there are 1.44 million people with disabilities in Korea, an increase of 396,000 or 27 percent from 1995.

The poll found that 3.09 percent of the nation`s population is handicapped. A total of 2.34 percent of all women had handicaps versus 3.87 percent of men while urban areas, where 2.55 percent of residents had disabilities, had fewer handicapped residents than rural areas (5 percent).

By age, those above 40 accounted for 75 percent of the total handicapped population. But handicapped people still made up a lower percentage of the population here than in the United States, where the figure was 20.6 percent, Australia (18 percent), Germany (8.4 percent) and Japan (4.8 percent).

But KIHASA officials said this does not mean that Korea has fewer handicapped people than advanced countries but only that Korean handicapped people are reluctant to report their disabilities due to social prejudices. They said the government also offers few welfare benefits and imposes strict conditions on the designation of handicapped status.

Song Sang-Keun songmoon@donga.com