Research on sexual minorities lacking

A supporter of equal rights for sexual minorities, left, clashes with an anti-gay protester during the Korea Queer Culture Festival in Seoul in June. / Yonhap

By Jung Min-ho

A Korea University professor recently collected all the research papers ever published about the health conditions of sexual minorities, including lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders, before starting his own study on the topic.

Compiling the papers did not take long. Professor Kim Seung-sup was surprised to find that there were only 128 pieces. Moreover, 53.5 percent of them are just case reports such as the number of people who had a sex change operation.

“The research about their health has increased dramatically in many other countries but not here,” he told The Korea Times Thursday. “What’s more important than the small number is that there is no thorough research about their health.”

This is the very first report about the number of studies done about the health of sexual minorities.

“We analyzed 101 clinical studies and 27 social health studies in total,” he said. “The majority of clinical articles were about intersex and transgenders.”

Among the 27 social health studies, 13 were about mental health, four about sexual behavior such as condom use, two about experience of violence and eight about other topics.

“Only a few health conditions have been explored in the previous research,” he said. “We could not find any previous research about healthcare accessibility of sexual minorities, which now we are working on.”

In the United States, scholars estimate that homosexuals and bisexuals account for about 3.5 percent of its total population. Yet Korea does not have reliable survey data about the information.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development survey about public acceptance of homosexuality from 2005 to 2009, Korea was the most hostile country toward them after Turkey.

“At Harvard University, there were courses like sexuality and public health. But no such curriculum exists here,” Kim said. “Our report is meaningful in terms of having a picture of what we are missing and what should be done academically about the topic.”