Ajumma queers step into spotlight: 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

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 into the parade route, trailed by dancing marchers 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.

Their message was pointed at their own community.

In lesbian circles, there is a persistent assumption that “everyone either leave the community for heterosexual marriage or disappear into domestic life by mid-30s.” The truck spoke to “break that script and invite lesbians pushing strollers, women who feel too old for bar meetups and self-desribed 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 such as 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, women in comfortable T-shirts and sneakers — some with young children, some hand in hand with long-term partners — danced without a pause.

A participant marches with a giant rainbow flag in central Seoul during the downtown parade of 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 subconsciously expected at Pride.

However, Pride, she realized, did not have to mean glossy, youthful or Instagrammable-cool. It could just 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 3040+ 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.

A queer woman's presence has also become visible in cinema screens.

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 flashy 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 feature Manok as a tragic victim or a saintly symbol of minority resilience. Instead, she is desribed as a stubborn, foul-mouthed, deeply human woman whose sexuality is only one facet of her character. Her queerness matters — it shapes her alliances, her conflicts with family and church-going neighbors, as well as her connection to a teenage transgender boy 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 layers of stereotype at once. For many years, much of Korean queer representation in mainstream media has been clustered around young, male, urban characters, often framed through first loves, clandestine relationships or club culture. Manok is none of those things.

Off-screen, older 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 has taken place for about a decade. Yet QWALK is the first nationwide group explicitly created for and by 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 seniors they can turn to — and nonqueer 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.