Walking along the busy streets of Seoul, it is easy to overlook the bumpy yellow patterns on sidewalks, but those bumps are essential for the visually impaired to navigate the streets.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government came under fire Monday for removing some of them recently, allegedly because they were not visually appealing to pedestrians who are not blind.

Exact data on how much tactile paving has been removed was not immediately available Monday, but last year, 500 meters of tactile paving was removed from a sidewalk between Sadang Station and Isu Station during a renovation project. More recently, 10 meters of tactile paving was removed near Hoehyeon Station.

The removal of such paving from sidewalks is like “a road suddenly disappearing after a night’s sleep,” Hong-Seo-jun, a 37-year-old spokesperson for the Korea Blind Union, an association for the visually impaired in South Korea, told The Korea Herald.

The group issued an official statement on April 14, denouncing Seoul’s decision to remove the paving.

“The paving exists as a daily guide to protect us from injury and losing our way,” said Hong, who lost his sight when he was 2-years-old after suffering from a high fever. “The government manual on the matter is very vague -- it allows too many interpretations.”

An official at the Seoul Metropolitan Government was quoted by local media as saying that the color -- a vivid yellow that tends to darken from age and dust -- could be “visually distracting.”

According to the guidelines set by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, sidewalks or routes frequented by those with vision problems must have tactile paving for safety.

However, under a manual written by the Seoul Metropolitan Government on sidewalk construction, it states “if there are no ‘risk factors’ on the sidewalk, then the installation of tactile paving is necessary to the point of helping visually impaired pedestrians decide their direction.”

The clause does not provide specific taglines on what the risk factors are nor the exact length of the paving.

“We didn’t completely remove the paving, but only the parts that were determined ‘unnecessary’ by the district offices,” said Seo Kwan-suk, a spokesperson for the city government.

By Jung Min-kyung (mkjung@heraldcorp.com)