Basically the saying is: "There are no gay people in Korea." - meaning, even if you are gay, they either 1. have no clue what gay is, 2. refuse to accept that Koreans can be gay, or 3. a sarcastic response by people like me who know or have met gay Koreans or even have students that I can tell are still in the closet.
I thought this topic was something that many people do not know about, (or even approve of), but as a human rights supporter, and with the momentum being made with President Obama's extension on hate crime legislation, I felt this was as good a time as any to discuss it.
The article is below.
By Matthew Klauber
Contributing Writer
Article Link
On Fridays and Saturdays after the sun goes down, both Korean and foreign gay residents begin to trickle into Itaewon from all over Seoul and parts beyond. They are businessmen and university students, English teachers and soldiers, mostly but not exclusively young men.
They come to socialize, openly about their sexuality in the only place that allows it in a still highly conservative, Confucian society. Social space has classified them as outsiders, along with foreigners and the sometimes disreputable businesses that cater to them.
It has cordoned them into grimy alleys that worm behind the flickering neon and newly refurbished facades of Itaewon's main drag, into clubs that seem to have been carved out of worn brick and cinderblock structures eerily redolent of 20th-century Seoul's poverty and war.
``Some people protect gay people and love them,'' said a 23-year-old bartender who asked to be identified by his English name, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, with artfully coiffed hair and posh attire, works at Queen, one of the most prominent and enduring of Itaewon's gay bars.
Queen is large, bright, well-maintained and tastefully decorated. Its core clientele is comprised of gay men and their straight female friends, though others are welcome as well. ``Especially straight girls... Some straight women in Korea like gay men, but no straight men. It is sad,'' he said.
Despite the hopes expressed by many young Korean gay people, there has been little direct change in public discourse on the issue of sexual minorities, only gathering momentum on the fringes of society.
Membership in gay student unions, for example, has steadily increased since the early 1990s, and the legal system has become steadily more supportive of sexual minorities, as with the Korean Supreme Court's 2006 decision allowing post-operative transgendered people to legally change their sex.
Gays are receiving more attention from the entertainment industry, as well. For instance, movies with same-sex content, such as ``Wang Ui-namja,'' ``BB Mountain,'' or recently, ``Hello My Love,'' all gathered significant controversy as they ran their course.
The off-screen attention, however, has sometimes been negative, as with the coverage of gay television actor Kim Ji-Hoo's suicide in 2008. Gays in Korea also face potential ostracism at work and in most venues of public life, outside of a few cosmopolitan industries such as fashion, the arts, and cosmetics.
In yet another sign of Korea's well-known generation gap, there has been a growing consciousness of, and less frequently, acceptance of, homosexuality among Korea's tech-savvy and increasingly cosmopolitan youth. Many young gays are impatient for the increased freedom they know exists in the West and Japan, and express a desire to travel and even live abroad.
``Tokyo is famous. Kyoto is too,'' Nathaniel reported. ``Many Korean people live in Hokkaido.''
Japan, close to home, with a large Korean population already, is a popular destination among Korean gays.
``Why would you go to Korea and not Japan?'' was a question that puzzled You-jeong about his Western customers. The 20 year-old, whose bold demeanor is belied by his slender build and tastefully colorful attire, tends bar at SoHo, down the road from Queen.
``Korea is a very conservative society. I would like to live in Tokyo,'' he said. The cosmopolitan outlook of many younger, urban Koreans is voiced even more strongly by young gays like You-jeong. ``I like Korean men, Japanese men, Western, all kinds. I just care about the person.''
You-jeong came out with his sexuality in high school, to his family, fellow students and everyone else in his life. He reported some confusion but little serious harassment.
Older Koreans are far more reticent to come out, or even to speak on the record, with a few notable exceptions. One of the most notable, of course, is Hong Seok-chun, the actor who lost his career when he came out in 2000. He started a business in Itaewon, the now-famous restaurant Our Place.
It became successful, and Hong opened several more Asian and Western restaurants in the district. He has since reappeared on television as a gay hairdresser on a popular soap opera and is now opening a club called My Bad.
Hong is as impressed with the pace of change in Korea as younger gays are impatient with it. ``Yes, of course, it's changed a lot,'' he said. ``These days you can meet a lot of gay people in the street and they are not shy anymore.'' Still, he admits, many stay in the closet. ``As a gay in Korea, they feel ashamed, and try to hide it from their family and things like that. They feel insecure.''
It was Hong's former boyfriend, a Dutch national, who helped him overcome his own sense of shame. ``He said, `You should know that you are a beautiful person... You have a good heart.' He changed my character.''
Moreover, parents of gay children in Korea often respond with denial and anxiety. ``I think all the parents of gay kids are worried about their kids' careers. They worry about how they will survive in this conservative society.'' Hong's own parents simply refused to accept that he was gay at first, and asked him when he would marry a woman for years after he told them.
``I think the gay issue is not that big of an issue because of what happened with me,'' among other things, Hong said. ``Still, we have to keep fighting. It takes time. But I am willing to do that, I will fight.''
Gay Koreans describe their lives less as sad than confined and secretive. The string of bars and nightclubs known to habitu?s as 'homo hill' and its outliers are the hub of gay life in Korea. There is reputedly a smaller circle of bars in the Gwanghwamun area, quieter and more private, open mainly to Korean regulars and their guests. Outside of Seoul, with the exception of a handful of bars in Busan and some sites on the Internet, there is nothing.
matthew.klauber@gmail.com
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