Every morning Choi Su-yun takes the subway, crosses the streets and navigates her way through the corridors and office at City Hall.

This is only a simple daily routine for most people, but would be somewhat impossible for the blind woman without On-you, a 3-year-old golden retriever and her 24-hour best mate.

“On-you directs me the whole way and tells me whenever we face obstacles. He is so helpful,” Choi, 28, told The Korea Herald. 

 

Choi Su-yun poses with her guide dog On-you at Seoul City Hall. (Park Hae-mook/The Korea Herald)

Choi is the first civil servant at the Seoul Metropolitan Government who works with a guide dog.

Attending a special high school and majoring in education with a counseling specialty at college, Choi passed the civil service examination last year.

Since September, she has been working in the department supporting disabled people at the city government, helping education and housing for low-income severely disabled people.

Choi was not born blind. Her vision suddenly deteriorated at age 13 and she went blind in only three months. It was presumably due to a nerve problem but the exact cause is still unknown.

Choi still remembers her first encounter with the guide dog last year. On-you was donated by Samsung Guide Dog School for the Blind. The school, funded by Samsung Fire & Marine, is the nation’s only official guide dog training institute.

“It was so awkward at first. I wasn’t used to calling his name or complimenting him,” she said.

Having an adjustment period of two weeks at the training center and another other two weeks at home, the public servant now always starts and wraps up her day with the dog.

“Staying with On-you all day, I feel like we are communicating each other. But I’m not sure if he feels the same way,” she said with laughter.

While working at Seoul City Hall, various support devices help her with tasks such as an optical character reader and electronic reading enlarger.

“Useful devices cannot perfectly substitute my eyes. They cannot read the images for me. But they are really helpful. City Hall here is much more prepared than other places.”

Some 1,500 disabled people work in government institutions in Seoul and of them 271 work at the Seoul Metropolitan Government. About 13.4 percent are blind or visually impaired.

While a public organization is obliged to hire disabled people to fill at least 3 percent of its total employees, Seoul City set the goal at 6 percent and decided to fill 10 percent of its new hires with those who are disabled each year until the goal is achieved. Seoul City has reached 4.3 percent so far as of September this year.

Although she has been receiving lots of help from people around her, Choi cannot avoid disappointing moments in life just for being blind.

“Whenever new interesting books are released, I can’t read them right away but must wait until they are converted to audio books or Braille, which usually takes one or two months.”

Enjoying her work life with On-you, she now pursues a new dream.

“I wish my life itself could change people’s perspective and prove that disabled people can work normally as others. And I hope my job keeps me helping someone in need.”

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)