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| A participant with a rainbow flag explores the 19th Seoul Queer Culture Festival held at Seoul Square on July 14. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon |
By Lee Suh-yoon
A lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights group filed an administrative suit recently against a district office's disapproval of its planned Queer Culture Festival in Incheon, denouncing it for discrimination against sexual minorities.
Early last month, Dong-gu office of the port city rejected the Incheon Queer Culture Festival organizing committee's application to host its first Queer Culture Festival at a public square next to Dongincheon Station on Line 1 due to a lack of parking.
"We cannot accept the district office's arbitrary reasons for rejecting a permit for the event when there are no set standards or an independent committee to make objective decisions," Lee Hye-yeon, head of Incheon's Queer Culture Festival organizing committee, told The Korea Times, Friday.
"The local authorities are acting unreasonably, as they are demanding that we find a private parking lot that can accommodate 100 vehicles for participants although there are numerous public parking lots around the venue."
Dong-gu Office is expected to make a final decision by Tuesday on whether to approve the event. If the district office turns down the application, the organizers are set to host it at the square anyway, within "legal limits."
According to the district office, it rejected the LGBT pride event because the event required more safety workers and parking than the organizers could handle for a 2,000-person event.
"An event with 2,000 participants requires at least 300 safety workers but the organizer's initial proposal said it would only prepare 100 safety monitors," Park Chun-soo, an official of the district office's traffic regulation division, told The Korea Times.
"The organizers later said they would increase the number of safety workers to 300 but we still had to withhold their permit for the event because of the lack of parking around the square. The organizers assured us participants will arrive by public transportation but we had no way to trust these claims, especially since the event will draw people from all over the country."
The district office, however, admitted there was no set regulation for barring events organized by civic groups based on the number of safety workers or parking spaces.
And Seoul, which hosted its 19th annual Queer Culture Festival earlier this year, has no such rule either. The capital's own event – held in July – drew over 60,000 participants, according to organizers' estimates, and was carried out smoothly with just around 150 administrative staff.
"I can't really understand why the festival was rejected an event permit at Incheon. And with no set rules, it was really up to the district government office's arbitrary judgment," Kang Myung-jin, head of the country's Queer Culture Festival organization committee, told The Korea Times.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government, on the other hand, has set guidelines for issuing permits to events by civic groups in public areas. However, they are limited to just regulating certain behaviors or the timeline for permit applications, and do not require organizers to arrange a specific number of administrative staff or parking spaces.
Gwangju is also planning to host its first pride festival this year. LGBT pride parades have been held in Seoul, Daegu, Busan, Jeju and Jeonju so far.
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