‘Paradise’ spotlights Seoul's disappearing queer hubs
In August 2020, UC San Diego history professor Todd Henry decided to combine his interests in Korean urban history (reflected in his first book, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea 1910-1945) and Korea’s queer history (the topic of a collection he edited titled "Queer Korea," and his forthcoming book, "Profits of Queerness: Media, Medicine, and Citizenship in Hetero-Authoritarian South Korea, 1950-1980") by, as he put it, “exploring the unknown history of queer life around Euljiro.” “It's one of many areas in Seoul that used to have a queer vibe to it, but has since changed in many ways," he told The Korea Times. "So, I was in the process of trying to narrate histories of queer neighborhoods, or queer hubs as I call them, that have since disappeared from Seoul’s landscape.” Though he had already known about Euljiro, “I couldn't exactly figure out where the bars were.” A solution to this problem was found by “looking through old European gay guides to the world that were popular from the 1960s forward,” which listed nu
Oct 31, 2023By Matt VanVolkenburg
