Field Research on the Deaf situations in Asia

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In this research, the situations of deaf people and their sign language in Korea and China were investigated. The main items to be discussed here are as follows:1.welfare laws for disabled people, 2.deaf society, 3.education for the deaf, 4.information guarantee, 5.video tapes recording Korean Sign Language(KSL) and Chinese Sign Language(CSL).In Korea, welfare laws for the deaf have been progressing rapidly. This comes from the effective actions of the Deaf Association. Although they partly modeled their activities on those of the Japanese Federation of the Deaf, they have many activities which are further advanced than those in Japan and their attitude on joining the general society is very positive. Especially, they have turned their attention towards deaf education problems, particularly those of tertiary level education for deaf people.In China, after the reform and liberation, laws for disabled people have assured their fundamental rights and their living environment has taken a favorable turn. However, the training system of sign language interpreters is not working well. Concerning CSL, because of the huge national land area and population, deaf people have a lot of dialects. This makes it difficult for them to fix Standard CSL. But they are researching the diversity of dialects and trying to overcome the problems blocking their attempt to standardize their sign language.Through this research, it has been clearly shown that deaf people are moving towards solutions for the political, legal, educational, and linguistic problems they are facing. In order to produce the "Information Encyclopedia on Asian Deaf People and Their Sign Languages, " further research has to be carried out in other Asian countries.