Incheon queer festival disrupted as eight indicted

Anti-gay protesters clash with riot police in Incheon, Saturday, a head of a queer culture event. / Yonhap

By Kim Jae-heun

A queer festival, scheduled for Saturday in Incheon, was unable to proceed due to strong protest from conservative groups that led to eight people being indicted.

The first-ever queer event in the port city was planned to take place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. near Dongincheon Station on Line 1, with over 300 people participating.

However, right after the opening declaration, 1,000 anti-gay protesters, comprised of religious and other conservative civic groups, overran the festival, preventing it from continuing.

The Queer Cultural Festival is an event to promote the rights and diversity of sexual minorities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). The first queer event in Korea was held in Seoul in 2000. Since then, the LGBT rights group has hosted the event in different cities, including Daegu and Busan.

While protesters were attempting to block the queer event, some of them clashed with festival organizers and violence broke out.

As a result, the Incheon Jungbu Police Station booked eight without detention _ five on charges of interrupting the rally, two for obstruction of justice and one for obstructing traffic.

Incheon's Dong-gu Office had disapproved the queer festival's request to host the event at Dongincheon Station last month, citing a lack of parking.

However, the organizers of the queer festival filed an administrative adjudication against the district office saying there is no municipal ordinance requesting such standards and they proceeded with the event without permission from the office.

The organizer pledged to hold the queer event next year with better preparation.

“Protesters will once again try to stop us from hosting the event next year, but we will try to offer a safer festival,” Lee Hye-yeon, head of Incheon's Queer Culture Festival organizing committee, said on Facebook.

“We will meet again next year and do it again.”