Blind Rub Downs

Here's an interesting article about blind only professions in South Korea.

"Firm hands and nimble fingers may help, but to work as a massage therapist in South Korea you need another qualification.

You must be registered blind.

It is a legal protection that provides many blind people with autonomy and an income.

The sole right to practise massage, in place for the best part of a century, now means that more than 7,000 visually impaired massage therapists earn their living this way.

I met Han Yong-seok, busy training to become a masseur, at South Korea's National School for the Blind in Seoul.

Before coming to study here, he was once employed as a teacher.

But he lost his sight late in life, and like many of his fellow students, he says he had no choice but to give up his existing profession.

"I simply couldn't get another job apart from massage work," he tells me.

"I need to learn this trade so I can continue to bring up my family and be part of society."

Illegal army

But now this exclusive privilege is under challenge as the country's constitutional court is preparing to rule on whether the monopoly discriminates against sighted people.

Park Yoon-soo wants sighted people to have the right to be a masseur

It seems there is a lot more South Korean flesh to be pummelled and squeezed than 7,000 blind masseurs and masseuses can cope with.

The big cities are awash with massage parlours, barber shops and bath houses, all offering massages by unlicensed, sighted practitioners, an estimated half a million of them in total.

Now this illegal army of sighted masseurs want the country's top judges to rule that they have a basic human right to choose their profession."

Tane and Danny got massages the other day and the people were sighted. So, that means they got their muscles worked by illegals. Also, apparently this practice is the same in China too.