Hyeongwon, a happy workplace for severely disabled persons, opened in Paju, Gyeonggi Province on Sept. 28. "With the opening of Hyeongwon, we will make efforts to become a pioneer of productive welfare, away from the existing beneficial welfare. It also reflects the government's policy pursuing realization of active welfare in the 21st century," a company spokesman said. Chung Duk-whan, president of Hyeongwon, made a great contribution to enactment of the Special Law to Purchase Goods Produced by Severely Disabled Persons First.
President Chung, who is a disabled person himself, created a new paradigm for the realization of vocational rehabilitation and productive welfare of severely disabled persons, he said. "We employ 250 severely disabled persons and help them start a lifetime of self-reliant living.
We will also represent the spirit of the Korean welfare system that is pushing the harmony of disabled and non-disabled people in the workplace," said Chung, who became disabled, suffering from total paralysis, as a national judo player. "At the same time, we are changing the type of jobs for severely handicapped people from what were in the past labor-intensive one to technology-intensive ones," he stressed.
The opening ceremony of Hyeongwon began with a prayer by Pastor Lee Soon-duk of Eden Missionary Church. Following an address by President Chung, Former Grand National Party Chairwoman Park Geun-hye, Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Choi Won-yong, and Lee Sung, head of the Guron Gu Office, delivered a congratulatory speech.
Also on hand at the event were Kim Jung-rok, chairman of Korea Association of Persons with Physical Disabilities, Kim Hae-sup, chairman of Korea Spinal Cord Injury Association, and Song Young-wook, chairman of the Korea Foundation for Persons with Disabilities. In Hyeongwon, severely disabled persons learn techniques and produce products, which require skill. For instance, they produce an environment-friendly detergent, called "Green Kiss' and "PHMB," which boast of a high degree of sterilizing power. Hyeongwon is also moving to produce new products using LED in near future.
