Equality For All: South Korea’s Sexual Minority Movement
interviewed by: Rory Ainsworth
edited by: Matthew Phillips
The International Strategy Center (ISC) spent June and July hosting events and study groups on queer issues. We have had movie nights and book clubs centered around media representation, queer theory in the context of leftism, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the US. On July 28th, we concluded these two months with our Progressive Forum interviewing Holic, the president of the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center.
ISC: Please briefly describe your background and how you began working for queer rights and in activism.
Holic: I am AFAB (assigned female at birth), and I Identify as a lesbian. My activism started in 2006 when I began to question my identity. And while I was having these questions in my late twenties, I searched the internet regarding these questions that I had, and that is how I found the organization that I am currently working at: the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center. While receiving counseling from the organizers of this organization, I began to think that I would also like to be an activist in this field. The Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center mostly focuses on cultural activities and education and had started in 2002. I started part time and then became a full time activist, and now I’m the president. As for my participation in the Seoul Queer Culture Festival right now, in July we had the 24th Queer Culture Festival and I had started as a volunteer around the ninth festival.
ISC: The Anti-Discrimination Act, first proposed in 2007, which prohibits discrimination based on gender, disability, age, language, national origin, ethnicity, race, nationality, and much more, has been the subject of various efforts. These include a petition to the National Assembly with 100,000 signatures demanding the passage of the act, activists engaging in hunger strikes, continuous efforts from civil society, and recommendations from the United Nations Human Rights Council. However, the bill is still pending in the National Assembly. What is the current situation regarding LGBTQ+ individuals' access to healthcare in South Korea, and how is the fight for healthcare rights being carried out?
Holic: First, recently the National Human Rights Commission of Korea did a study on the discrimination against trans people in Korea and there was a high percentage of trans people that felt very uncomfortable, especially when they were facing medical staff. So they can't quite go to a hospital and comfortably reveal their identity and their gender without feeling threatened. And this is not just true of trans people, but also common across many LGBT people on the whole.
Awareness among healthcare providers is so low that they can’t even distinguish trans and gay people. And in Korea, we have a system of national identification numbers for every citizen, and this number has a digit that identifies gender. For a citizen to change this number, they have to go through an entire gender transition operation. And in order to actually go through with this operation, they need an opinion from a psychiatrist. It is however very difficult for LGBT people to find a psychiatrist that is open minded about these issues. For trans people, this right to health care and access to health care is most important, as they have great need of it. But on top of that, many lesbian people and FTM (female to male) trans men also have very limited access to gynecologists. Nonetheless, there have been some victories:
The Korean Gynecological Society, the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center, and some lesbian specialized counseling centers, held a forum in 2013 to discuss the difficulties that these LGBT people, especially trans men, trans women, and lesbians, face in gynecological clinics.
Soonchunhyang University Hospital established a gender clinic as a measure to improve the safe access for LGBT people to receive health care that they need.
Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital, and Korea University's Annam Hospital also established gender clinics. However, one limitation is that all these clinics are located in Seoul.
In Seoul National University in 2021, a course was established to teach the LGBT rights in health care and medicine to students and professionals.
In Korea, HIV and AIDS are highly stigmatized, so in my organization we are conducting studies to gauge public perceptions and awareness of it. A Sexual Minority Medical Research Society was established and this society published a book called A Hospital Without Discrimination.
Recently there was a new organization established called SHARE, which is fighting for reproductive rights not only of LGBT people but on a broader basis. And there has been a movement by SHARE to establish a clinic to offer wider access to reproductive rights.
In Mapo and Eunpyeong there are hospitals operated by social cooperatives, which are trying to make healthcare more accessible for LGBT people and people with HIV.
ISC: What is the current situation regarding LGBTQ+ individuals' right to family formation in South Korea, and how is the fight for family formation rights being carried out?
Holic: In April there was a very significant change with several bills that were introduced at the National Assembly. The Basic Income Party proposed a bill regarding civil unions and the Justice Party proposed three different bills via Assembly member Janghae-oh, which included marriage equality, unmarried families, and civil partnerships.
The significance of these legislative proposals is that during the last presidential administration, similar legislation was proposed, but failed to pass in the National Assembly because there was fierce opposition. But, despite the opposition, the National Assembly even proposing these kinds of bills is an encouraging development.
In Korea we have a very high level of poverty among the elderly. As such, we need to find alternative ideas regarding family that are not based on traditional gender norms or exclusively focused on blood relations. Surveys conducted among Korean people suggest that many respondents didn’t have someone in their family or friends they could reach out to when they were in difficulty.
A broad solidarity group for LGBT issues called Rainbow Action (mu-ji-gae haeng-dong) has declared that they will put full effort into the struggle to legalize gay marriage in Korea.
But in my personal opinion marriage has never been an institution that is equal for everybody involved. I think rights to family independent of marriage, or the right not to marry should be guaranteed. The discourse regarding dismantling of the traditional family model seems encouraging.
In the LGBT movement in Korea right now there are many different struggles. For example, the struggle of the institutionalized, for the queer youth to escape from abusive homes and/or school environments and the rights to housing for these youth. There are also struggles by the trans community against this gender binary. So, many different movements are hoping to escape from the traditional family model.
ISC: In your opinion, what have been the significant achievements of the LGBTQ+ movement in South Korea so far?
Holic: Whenever we prepare for the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, the most difficult problem that we face every year is the venue. And this is not only a problem for the Seoul festival. Every Queer Cultural Festival nationally faces the same issue. And that is because the strongest force for hatred in this country is currently from conservative Christianity. This organized campaign by conservative Christian churches disrupts the Queer Cultural Festival, lodges complaints against our proposed policies. And this is becoming a very concerning problem in Korea.
With the conservative regime in government right now this systematic movement by the Christian churches has only become stronger. Although for the last eight years our Queer Culture Festival was held in Seoul Plaza, this year the Seoul metropolitan government did not approve that festival. We had a big task of finding an alternative venue.
As organizers for this Seoul Queer Culture Festival, our first principle is safety for everyone who joins our festival. The anti-LGBT movement displays fierce hatred; whenever we have our festival, even if we are simply enjoying ourselves within the venue, the venue would be surrounded by people that spew hateful rhetoric and sometimes engage in violence against those in the festival. Because safety is our first priority, we have to cooperate with the police to find a safe venue for the festival. And the location that we found was the road in a four-lane street. And in that location we were able to hold our festival without issue. But every year, whenever we try to secure a venue, we go to police stations to register our assembly. We basically form a queue of dozens of activists and citizens for about five days, in three different police stations, so that we can secure a venue.
And the reason that we were able to have a safe Queer Cultural Festival is because when we first began our festival, it started with only 50 people. Now every year we have around 130,000 to 150,000. And the reason that we were able to grow this large was simply because many citizens were allies to LGBT rights and our movement, and that was our great strength.
ISC: I believe that the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, which has been running for over 20 years, has achieved significant progress. What do you think are the remaining tasks or challenges that need to be addressed in the future?
Holic: For the last 20 years we had our Seoul Queer Culture Festival without missing a single year. And I think one of the greatest achievements that we've had was the increased visibility of the LGBT people in our society. For example, many people in Korea used to believe that “there are no LGBT people living in Korea,” but now I think we have made our Queer Culture Festival something that most people are aware of. The loud and unsightly nature of those that oppose us even adds publicity.
When we first started, when we made phone calls to introduce who we were and to make inquiries, when we said “We are the Queer Culture Festival,” people didn't know what “queer” meant. But now when we introduce ourselves as the Queer Culture Festival, most people know what that means. Despite the growth of our movement and despite the achievements that we've made, I think for most LGBT people in Korea, they have great difficulty in revealing their identity in school or in their family or at work. And I think that is because to come out in Korean society, that still means the moment you come out, you are going to face discrimination. As we mentioned previously, the anti-discrimination law has not passed for the past 20 years, and there are no legislative measures in Korea to keep LGBT people safe or secure their rights, which demonstrates the difficulty that we face in Korean society.