Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Korea's long wait for equality law
By Kwon Mee-yoo
June is Pride Month and in much of the developed world, the rainbow flag is hard to miss — draped across public buildings as well as corporate storefronts. In Korea, it is harder to find. Beyond the Seoul Queer Culture Festival and its parade, the rainbows symbolizing the LGBTQ+ community are largely absent. Even Korean companies that create Pride campaigns for their overseas markets tend to stay quiet at home, wary of the backlash that such public support can invite.
That reticence reflects a deeper gap. Korea remains one of only two OECD members, alongside Japan, without a comprehensive anti-discrimination law. Rep. Son Sol of the Progressive Party introduced a bill in January, followed by Rep. Chung Choon-saeng of the Rebuilding Korea Party in February. Gender Equality Minister Won Min-kyong also pledged her support. Yet the law remains unrealized, deferred once again on the familiar grounds that society has not reached a consensus.
The comparison with Korea's neighbors makes the lag sharper. Japan, the other OECD holdout, has no national equality statute either, but municipal partnership systems now recognize same-sex couples across much of the country — a form of acknowledgment that, while short of civil law, has no equivalent in Korea. The wider region shifted in recent years as well. Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage in 2019, the first in Asia; Thailand's marriage equality law took effect in 2025; and Nepal moved to full legal recognition through a Supreme Court order this June. Korea, by contrast, is not debating marriage equality at all. It has yet to pass even a basic law against discrimination.
That debate is approaching its third decade. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea first recommended a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in 2006 and international human rights bodies have pressed Korea to act almost every year since. The deadlock has a clear source. The most persistent opposition comes from conservative Christian groups, which argue that the bill's provisions on sexual orientation could restrict the expression of religious belief. Supporters counter that the law targets concrete acts of exclusion in employment, education and services, not private conviction or speech. This is the disagreement that has sunk every previous attempt, and no law will pass until it is confronted directly rather than avoided.
A common argument for the delay is that Korean society has not yet reached a consensus. Most surveys conducted in the 2020s have found support hovering around 60 percent. In the most recent one, Korea Gallup found 55 percent of respondents in favor of enacting the law, while 29 percent opposed, with 15 percent undecided — figures almost identical to a 2022 survey, suggesting a stable majority rather than a fleeting mood. Support crossed political lines, running 73 percent among progressives, 58 percent among moderates and 39 percent among conservatives. On the specific worry that the law would promote homosexuality or gender transition, more respondents disagreed than agreed.
If anything, passing the law might show that it is not the radical measure its opponents fear it to be. Protecting rights is not a task that waits for perfect or unanimous agreement. Democracies tend to advance not by waiting for full consensus but by negotiating between competing values and moving, even imperfectly, toward something fairer. The better path now is not to defer the question indefinitely, but to find a reasonable compromise — one that respects the concerns on both sides while delivering the equality the Constitution already guarantees.
A comprehensive anti-discrimination law would not be a perfect or final answer, but after nearly 20 years of deferral, it would be a meaningful place to begin. One hopes that the next Pride Month arrives with more rainbows across the country and, perhaps, with an equality law that is no longer stuck in a legislative committee.
The writer is an editor of the politics and city desk at The Korea Times.