[INTERVIEW] Korea's LGBTQ community seeks visibility through Seoul Pride Festival

Yang Sun-woo, chairperson of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizing committee poses during an interview with The Korea Times at the committee's office in Mapo District, Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Lee Hae-rin

For an estimated 2.5 million Koreans identifying themselves as sexual minorities, the annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF) is the long-awaited "national queer holiday," a rare occasion where they feel safe and encouraged to gather and express their identity.

The festival, which celebrates its 24th anniversary this year, started in 2000 with 50 participants on a road in northeastern Seoul's Daehangno area. The event grew to over 135,000 participants last year, and despite opposition and interference by conservative Christians, it seemed to have nestled at Seoul Plaza, one of the biggest public venues in the capital.

The inaugural edition of Seoul Queer Culture Festival takes place in Daehangno in northern Seoul, Sept. 9, 2000. Around 50 Korean sexual minorities participated in the event titled "Rainbow 2000." Courtesy of Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizing committee

However, the festival now has to find an alternative venue this year, after the Seoul Metropolitan Government earlier this month disapproved the use of the city square for the upcoming festival.

This two-decade evolution of the SQCF has been a "journey of finding a public space where the country's LGBTQ communities can be and show who they are," Yang Sun-woo, the chairperson of the SQCF organizing committee, said during an interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday.

Yang, an activist at the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center, has been taking part in the SQCF since she joined it in 2005 as a staff member of the Korea Queer Film Festival, a part of the SQCF. She has been in her current position since 2015.

Amid opposition from conservative Christians and merchants, the festival had to find one venue after another across the capital ― from Daehangno to Itaewon to Cheonggye Stream to Sinchon ― to house the growing queer community and its supporters, she said.

"By 2014, the anti-LGBTQ movement by conservative Christians turned more fierce and systematic," she said, explaining that in the meantime, the event also grew in scale, joined by over 3,000 people and foreign embassies in Seoul.

In that respect, the festival's organizing committee had no choice but to apply for the use of Seoul Plaza for its event next year, which has been open to any group upon application. "There are not that many places in the city that can take in over 100,000 people," she explained.

"Over the last decade, renting buses to come from outer-Seoul areas to express the hatred against the LGBTQ and disrupt our event with loudspeakers playing noise have grown like a 'culture' for the haters," she said, adding that her group also faces discrimination in the city government's administrative process.

Conservative Christians dressed in Korean traditional attire known as hanbok hold anti-LGBTQ demonstrations during Seoul Queer Culture Festival in Seoul Plaza in this photo taken in June 28, 2015. The banner reads, "The country built with blood and tears breaks down with homosexuality." Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

The Seoul government said earlier that the civic committee in charge of the management of Seoul Plaza decided to disapprove the event citing the regulations that if more than one organization applies for the same date and refuses to reschedule, the committee can rule in favor of an event that is child- and youth-oriented.

However, according to the stenographic records of the committee's meeting on May 3, the committee approved the Christian event, citing the "rights of others not to want to look at them" meaning SQCF participants, and the "negative impacts the queer event could have on children's sexual education."

Nine out of 12 members of the committee, consisting of experts, scholars and civilians "with knowledge and experience," Seoul Metropolitan Council members and public servants who attended the meeting agreed with the decision unanimously.

Yang likened the disapproval to the anti-LGBTQ groups' propaganda that views sexual minorities and their events as "obscene and sexual," which "should be concealed."

"It's similar to how gay men have been associated with HIV and AIDS," she said.

Yang and her colleagues' journey to finding such an inclusive space led them to participate in neighboring countries' Pride festivals, including Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sydney. Pride parades take different forms in each country, but the Korean activists find the foreign experience strangely "quiet," due to the absence of anti-LGBTQ protests, Yang said.

"We even joked, (sarcastically) saying, 'this festival is not as loud, and not as fun,'" she said, but the inclusivity and LGBTQ-friendliness of the foreign cities were also overwhelming, making them feel as if they were in a "rainbow paradise," she said.

Finding an alternative venue is the next biggest dilemma for SQCF organizers. Although the venue for the upcoming SQCF is yet unknown, Yang insisted it needs to be in the city center.

A giant rainbow flag is carried aloft by participants at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in Seoul Plaza, central Seoul, June 1, 2019. The event was joined by over 180,000 LGBTQ people and supporters combined. Courtesy of Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizing committee

"Pride festivals are all about LGBTQ visibility. It's about experiencing that you are not the only one who is gay, lesbian or transgender in this world, and witnessing how many others are around us," Yang said, explaining that the celebrations are held in city centers all around the world and that the anti-LGBTQ groups' demands to hold the event somewhere more remote and less visible won't fit the purpose of the event.

Contrary to the wide misconception spread through fake news on YouTube and anti-LGBTQ propaganda, the SQCF is an event far from "obscenity." It is rather a day of joy and celebration, joined by many non-sexual minorities, religious leaders and allies who bring their families, Yang said, inviting everyone to join the upcoming festival, regardless of where it will be.

The Korea Times intern reporter Cho Hye-yoon contributed to this article.