Korea is a conservative country, abortion is not legal, comprehensive sexual education is a thing of the future, pornography is censored and the queer community is so invisible that it is often times only found in hidden unmarked bars and jimjilbangs. I went to Seoul Pride this year, which was touted as the biggest LGBTQ affirming celebration in Korea. Let’s just say it left a lot to be desired. People wore masks to cover their face and armbands asking not to be photographed by the media, for fear of being outted. A massive protest was staged and more Christian fundamentalist protesters were present than actual participants in the celebration. Hundreds of protesters laid in the street blocking the floats for the parade and eventually caused the parade to be canceled. An intense police presence was there and because of their violent behavior, took many of the protestors away.
While I was researching for this article, I interviewed several Korean queer people about their coming out experience, one woman laughed at me and said “What coming out experience?” To her, the idea of being out to her family was so impossible that the mere thought was outrageous. Another person told me that one day she’d find a gay man to marry, they’d have kids and please their families while continuing to have same sex romances on the side. At this point in the conversation, my jaw was agape and I was stunned into a silence. Being from a country that is relatively accepting of LGBT people, the idea of marrying to please my family is so far out of my scope of reality that it was hard for me to grasp.
The attitude towards LGBTQ people is diverse and varied in Korea. In Korea, many people have never met an openly LGBT person so their ideas on queer culture are mostly theoretical and based on what they see in the media. The queer community is so underground that gayness is often not even thought of as a possibility. The impact of this lack of concrete understanding is evident in the statistics collected about sexual minority students. The Survey on Sexual Minority Students’ Human Rights in Seoul shows that nearly 77% of LGBTQ students have had suicidal ideations and more than 58% have made a suicide attempt. While many young people are struggling to find acceptance, many older people believe that “homosexuality is a western illness” brought to Korea during the Korean War in 1945. The younger generation is slowly coming around to the idea of queerness, but Korea lags well behind the rest of the affluent countries in the world in LGBTQ acceptance.
While many people in Korea do not openly discuss queer culture, if you peel back the shiny façade of Korea and know what to look for you can find it. Undeniably, South Korea’s KPop Idols are taking over the Asian music scene. The idols and their androgynous fashion have created a space for the traditionally queer aesthetic. “Flower boys” or men with particularly feminine featured are considered highly attractive in East Asia. In an effort to bank on this attraction, many Korean celebrities play up their traditionally feminine features in order to appear more androgynous. G-Dragon, Hong-gi or Amber from Fx are all excellent examples of mainstream celebrities dedicated to androgyny. At first, I assumed these were examples of LGBT celebrities still hiding in the closet, but then I learned about “shipping”, “fan service” and the “boy love” community.
KPop label owners have created a paradigm of heteronormative advertising, boy groups are marketed towards women and girl groups are marketed towards men. Everything is planned and polished; from the stylists they work with to the type of music they produce is in an effort to please their target fan base. Fan service is a marketing concept where entertainment labels are combing blogs and trying to uncover what the “fandom” wants to see. The music labels encourage the artists to play into the erotic fetishes and desires of their young female audience.
In the early 70s, comics written by female fans for female fans started emerging in mainstream comic book stores in Japan and South Korea. According to the president of Central Park Media, “A lot of the lesbian imagery that we see in American pop culture is meant to tantalize male viewers. The opposite is true in Asia: A lot of the male homoeroticism is meant for a female audience and is written by females for females.” The comic books marketed towards young Asian women began to become more erotic and pornographic in nature, eventually in the 1990s an entire subgenre called “Boy love” entertainment was developed for young women focusing on the eroticization of gay male relationships.
The world of Tumblr (and social media in general), has connected many of these fans. They have created digital communities dedicated to different interests called “Fandoms”. “Shipping” short for “Relationship” is an internet concept where people become fans of relationships between celebrities. These can be real or imagined relationships. The world of “boy love” intersected with the world of Kpop and Jpop fandoms and we began to see homoerotic behaviors and androgynous style from straight Kpop artists in an effort to please the erotic fetishes of young Asian girls. A good example of this androgyny and boy love fan service is how the members of Super Junior or SHINee kiss on stage and touch each other provocatively in concert.
While marketing companies use eroticism of homosexuality and androgyny to sell albums and please fans, many of the Kpop Idols themselves do not see it as a queer fetishization. Siwon Choi for example is a member of Super Junior, arguably the most famous KPop band in the world. He has been notorious for his hypocrisy towards LGBT people. When he was approached asking if he would ever play a gay character he replied “While I respect all genders, I do not wish to acknowledge homosexuals as I have been taught that God created Man and Woman with specific characteristics and duties. I realize that with globalization, there are many [entertainers] who do not share my views. There are those who are value-oriented and those who are success-oriented. However shouldn’t an actor deliver an image to his audience through roles he chooses to portray, based on his beliefs in life?” At the same time, Siwon Choi engages in graphic boy love fan service, including stroking and kissing his male band members while shirtless on stage and making out with fellow band members. Essentially Choi, and other artists are claiming that their androgynous style and boy love fan service is acceptable because it’s driving sales of their albums and merchandise. However, if someone proclaims their identity as a queer person and engages in the same behaviors, the majority of Koreans would not support them.
What do you think? Is androgynous fashion cultural appropriation or a move towards a more gender ambiguous community? How do you feel about boy love fan service? Is it opening the doors to acceptance or creating an erotic caricature of gay relationships? Sound off in the comments below.
Author’s Note: Before I moved to South Korea, I was a professional LGBT activist in New York City. I am not Korean and I was raised in America. This post is not a comprehensive guide to LGBTQ issues in Korean culture.
Meg Ten Eyck is a former LGBT rights activist, currently living in South Korea and traveling the world with her partner Lindsay. They write about their experiences as a queer couple on their blog Dopes on the Road and post their travel photos on Instagram @dopesontheroad.
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