Challenges and Triumphs at Korea Queer Festival

Despite the heavy rain, the punishing humidity, and indifferent, obstructionist city bureaucrats, the 18th Korea Queer Culture Festival kicked off this past Saturday and was a smashing success.

An estimated fifty thousand people snaked their way through the security cue to a colourful collection of amazing costumes, booming music, and a limitless supply of glitter and acceptance.

City officials had conscripted over five thousand police officers to keep the peace during the pride parade and concert. There were no reports of violence, despite the large Christian crowds that flanked the entire City Hall grounds with tired, trite banners that read, “Homosexuality is a Sin!

Attendees were greeted to nearly one hundred booths occupied by human rights groups, foreign embassies, outreach organizations, and other LGBT clubs. Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters wore shirts and held signs supporting their LGBT loved-ones. In a deeply conservative country, each year, the Queer Festival seems to grow in support. The number of allies continues to swell, and the pride celebration is increasingly plural.

That being said, this year has been a tough one for the LGBT community in South Korea. The election of a new president always promises the ‘possibility of change.’ Still, nearly all of the serious contenders for the – prematurely vacated office – pledged to maintain the status quo and to maintain the definition of marriage as being “between one man and one woman.”

Reading the presidential tea leaves, the Army took the now president’s indifference towards sexual and gender minorities as a sign to begin prosecuting young gay men conscripted into the armed forces. This culminated in the first successful prosecution for being gay with an army captain’s conviction this past May.

The Army Chief of Staff, General Jang, Jun-Kyu, has made it a mission to entrap and publicly shame enlisted soldiers in his ranks. Jang has been accused of being regressive, intimidating, as a bigot, and employing unethical practices, resulting in the Army garnering a lot of unwanted attention for its homophobic witch-hunt.

In the West, a human rights attorney’s election would be a sign of a possible new direction for a country. However, Korea’s new president, Moon, Jae-In placated to Korea’s large older, conservative voting block. The promise of meaningful and much-needed change has all but dematerialized.

With all of the name-calling and painful social ostracizing by disapproving family and once friends in Korea, this one day, the Queer Culture Fest, and the events that happen in the week following the pride parade is essential. It’s needed for those young and feeling alone to see and recognize that others out there are like them or care about them. Will a gay pride fest reshape a country overnight? Certainly not. Will it save a single frightened and lonely soul, hopefully.

As the only openly transgender Canadian woman in Korea, and having lived here for over twelve years, I have experienced the difficulties of being queer in Korea. I have been surprised by the small strong circle of encouraging and compassionate friends here that have helped me in my journey to become the women I always should have been.