Extraordinary Attorney Woo is autistic representation at its best and its worst

polygon.com:

Extraordinary Attorney Woo begins with an argument. Jung Myung-seok, a senior attorney with Hanbada law firm, objects that CEO Han Seon-young has assigned an autistic lawyer to his team. Seon-young is quick to admonish him. It doesn’t matter that she’s autistic, she says; what matters is that she graduated top of her class from Korea’s most prestigious university.

It’s an immediate introduction to Extraordinary Attorney Woo at its best and worst: text that highlights Myung-seok’s, and Korea’s, ableism while the subtext reinforces the idea that disabled people’s value is derived from what they can contribute.

The attorney in question is the titular Woo Young-woo, played by allistic actress Park Eun-bin, an autistic savant who arrives at Hanbada after six months of struggling for employment due to her autism. The series follows her as she uses her extraordinary powers of memory and intellect to find solutions to questions her allistic colleagues cannot.

Is Extraordinary Attorney Woo good representation? The answer is complex. Having watched the series, and spoken to autistic viewers, autism organizations, and an actual autistic attorney, the consensus appears to be yes… and no?

Ableism is pervasive in the West, but there is significantly more stigma surrounding autism and disability in Korea, where the primacy of societal normalcy is traditionally paramount. “There is much more of a sense of shame, not just for individuals with disabilities but also for their families,” says Son Da-eun of Autism Partnership Korea. “Despite the prevalence of autism in Korea” — she tells me Koreans are diagnosed at a rate of 1 in 38, compared to the WHO’s global estimate of 1 in 100 — “you rarely have interactions with persons with autism on