Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
Queer middle-aged women reshape Korea's LGBTQ+ landscape
The 3040+ Zoomma Queer truck participates in the Seoul Queer Culture Festival parade in central Seoul, June 14, 2025. Courtesy of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival Organizing Committee
By Lee Hae-rin
Korea's queer visibility is aging, diversifying and moving beyond the city
Rainbow flags ripple through downtown Seoul every June, but this year, some of the loudest, sweatiest and most determined faces of Korea's LGBTQ+ community were not young, cosmopolitan gays. They were 30- and 40-something women.
At this year's Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF), a truck blasting remixed early-2000s K-pop rolled on to the parade route, trailed by people dancing along the route and a surprising number of parents. Banners displayed the logo of the 3040+ Jumma Queer group, a loose collective of lesbian, bisexual, queer and gender-nonconforming women in their 30s and 40s, who came together last year with a message for the community.
In some parts of the queer community, there is a perception that women who identify as LGBTQ+ “either leave the community for heterosexual marriage or disappear into domestic life by mid-30s,” as one member of the group framed it. The 3040+ Jumma Queer truck was there to break that script and invite lesbians pushing strollers, women who feel too old for bar meetups and self-described "ajumma queers" to be visible, noisy and together in the streets.
Instead of sleek pop divas and polished choreography, the truck leaned into a loud, slightly kitschy energy that one spectator later described as “like watching a contemporary gakseori (Korean street busking) show crash the queer parade.”
The playlist stitched together songs like Mina's “Pick Up the Phone,” BoA's “Girls on Top,” After School's “Bang” and Ivy's “Sonata of Temptation”– tracks that hit the muscle memory of Koreans who came of age in the early 2000s. The truck crawled through 3.5 kilometers in central Seoul under sweltering heat while women in comfortable T-shirts and sneakers danced without pause — some with young children, some hand-in-hand with long-term partners.
A participant marches with a giant rainbow flag in central Seoul during the parade for the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, Saturday. Yonhap
For one woman watching with her wife, the performance was “nothing short of a shock.” In a long social media post, she admitted that at first, the pounding trot-inspired beats and rough-around-the-edges performance style felt “cheap” compared with the polished pop aesthetics she had expected at Pride.
However, she realized that Pride did not have to mean glossy, youthful or Instagrammable visuals alone. It could just as well mean bodies of all ages shaking to “Tears” by So Chan-whee, with aunties, uncles and toddlers all together.
The women on the truck said the experience changed them, too. Members of the group have written that they found the courage to confess their feelings to longtime friends, come out to family members or embrace identities they had quietly hidden for years after climbing onto the truck. The act of being visibly, loudly queer in midlife — and being cheered for it — resonated far beyond one summer parade.
Women have also become visible as a presence on cinema screens, too.
A scene from Lee Yu-jin's 2025 film "Manok" / Courtesy of Indiestory
“Manok,” released on June 10, follows Manok (Yang Mal-bok), a middle-aged lesbian who once ran a lesbian bar in Seoul. After her mother's death, she returns to her hometown, a conservative rural village called Iban-ri, hoping for a quiet life.
Instead, her return sets off gossip not about her sexuality but about the fact that she is the ex-wife of Cheol-ju, the petty village chief whose power reaches into every corner of local life, pushing her to run against him in the upcoming election.
The film doesn't portray Manok as a tragic victim or a saintly symbol of minority resilience. Instead, she is described as a stubborn, foul-mouthed, deeply human woman whose sexuality is only one facet of her character. Her queerness matters — it shapes her alliances and her conflicts with family and church-going neighbors, as well as her connection to a transgender teenager in the village — but the story is ultimately about power, dignity and who gets to make decisions in a small community.
By centering a woman in her 50s who is divorced, queer and politically ambitious, “Manok” quietly dismantles several stereotypes at once. For many years, Korean queer representation in mainstream media has been primarily centered around young, male, urban characters, often framed through first loves, clandestine relationships or club culture. Manok is none of those things.
Off-screen, queer women are also stepping forward in professional arenas that once felt inhospitable.
A parade participant waves the flag of the Korean Women's Queer Lawyers' Association (QWALK) during the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in Seoul, Saturday. Courtesy of QWALK
Last year, more than 100 queer women in Korea's legal field formally launched the Queer Women's Association of Law in Korea (QWALK). Their aim is partly technical – to research and respond to legal issues such as marriage equality and intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships, while pushing for queer reproductive rights and the passage of an anti-discrimination law. But it is also deeply personal.
Korea has had a gay lawyers' association since 2015 and a queer-inclusive legal conference for about a decade. Yet QWALK is the first nationwide group explicitly created by and for queer women in law.
Many members trace their roots to queer women's circles in law schools that began informally linking up around 2017 and 2018, eventually growing into a wider network of students and practicing attorneys. Over time, those circles became spaces to share not only legal strategies but also experiences of workplace discrimination, family pressure and the invisibility of being both women and queer in a male-dominated field.
QWALK's leaders said their first goal is not to mount high-profile lawsuits but to “create a community where members feel comfortable and safe,” so that younger queer women in law know there are peers they can turn to — and for other colleagues begin to recognize that queer women are already working beside them.
"We hope to connect with one another as queer women in law, sharing our experiences and knowledge and building the power of solidarity. Beyond individual efforts, we aim to contribute to creating a society in which fundamental human rights and dignity of sexual minorities are meaningfully guaranteed under the law through collective action and cooperation," the group said in the founding statement.