03/04/2024 photo source: 경향신문 / https://blog.naver.com/ramman
70~85 IQs struggle with daily life, but are in the welfare blind spot
[Weekly Tendency] There are growing calls for national measures for borderline intelligent people. Borderline intelligent people are people who are on the borderline between people with intellectual disabilities and non-disabled people with above-average intelligence. In general, an IQ between 70 and 85 is considered borderline intelligent. There are no clear surveys or statistics on borderline intelligent people. However, based on statistics from overseas, it is estimated that about 14% of the population is borderline intelligent. Some of these people have no problems with life, but many have great difficulty in school, work, and social life. They may even be targeted by criminals. However, it has been pointed out that they are not recognized as people with disabilities, so they are often left out of welfare support.
Difficulty finding a job even after adulthood
On March 30, the Gyeonggi Institute for Disability Rights and Human Rights, the Public Interest Human Rights Law Foundation, and the Dongcheon Foundation held a press conference to announce a lawsuit to cancel the refusal of a borderline intelligent person’s application for disability registration. In January, Kim Ji-ho (a pseudonym), a man in his late 30s, applied for disability registration with the local government where he lives. Kim is borderline intelligent with an IQ of 72. His perceptual reasoning scores were particularly low, and he had great difficulty working with his hands. Since entering elementary school, she has struggled to tie her own sneakers and has repeatedly failed her driver’s license skills test. From an early age, he struggled with relationships and keeping up with schoolwork, but he blamed himself for it, believing it was a personality issue. Even as an adult, he was unable to find a job. As her struggles continued, she underwent a clinical psychological evaluation. She found out that she was borderline intelligent. Realizing that many of the disadvantages she had to endure in her life were not personal, Kim applied for disability registration. However, according to the current enforcement rules of the Disability Welfare Act, it is difficult to obtain even a ‘medical certificate for examining the degree of disability’ if your IQ exceeds 70. With the help of the Gyeonggi Institute for Disability Rights and Interest Issues, Kim filed a lawsuit against the local government to cancel the rejection of her disability registration application.
Choi Jeong-kyu, a lawyer at Wongok Law Firm representing Kim’s case, said that borderline intelligent people should be recognized as disabled and brought within the fence of the Disability Welfare Act. “In Korea, we have defined types of disabilities, and if a person falls into one of those categories, they are registered as disabled, and if not, they are not registered. However, Tourette’s syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), and other types that were considered diseases rather than disabilities have been recognized as disabilities through recent court rulings.” “Borderline intelligence is also not registered as a disability under the current law, but I think it can be changed through litigation,” Choi said. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in a lawsuit filed by a person with Tourette’s syndrome against a local government to cancel the rejection of her application for disability registration, stating that even if the enforcement provisions do not include the disability in question, administrative authorities must find and infer the regulations for the most similar type of disability. “It’s strange that a person with an IQ of 70 can be registered as a person with a disability, but a person with an IQ of 71 cannot,” Choi said, adding, “Retardation covers ‘severe disability’ to ‘not severe disability,’ but intellectual disability and autism are only recognized as ‘severe disability. He calls for a broader definition of intellectual disability.
*Please note this is a Korean article
Source: 경향신문
