“We Are Not Aliens, From Another Cosmos”
South Korea is considered an intolerant country where homosexuality is concerned. Yet throughout the Koryo dynasty, the union of “the dragon and the sun” (two male symbols) was fairly common among both kings and peasants. Even in the later Joseon period, where Confucian values prevailed, same-sex relationships were not unusual among village folk. It was only during the twentieth century that society began to consider homosexuality absolutely unacceptable.
That attitude of intolerance in the modern era did not generally take the form of active hostility, for homosexual acts were not banned by law, and there was no serious problem of anti-gay violence as in many Western countries. It was more the case that twentieth-century Korean society chose to pretend that homosexuality did not exist and only reacted against it—primarily through ostracism—when faced with people who wished to express their same-sex preference openly. Even today, the majority of gay Koreans lead double lives for fear of being disowned by parents, abandoned by friends, or facing discrimination in the workplace. Participants in “Gay Pride” marches sometimes cover their faces, to avoid being recognized.
It was in such an environment that Hong Seok-cheon, a rising actor, became the first Korean celebrity to “come out” in the year 2000. He forced Koreans to confront the reality that they all knew existed but preferred not to think about. The initial public response was rage: “At the time, ninety-five percent of the people hated me,” says Mr. Hong. Offers of TV work and sponsorship completely dried up, and friends deserted him.
Three years later, alone and poor and living in a small house near to the Itaewon district of Seoul, Mr. Hong opened a restaurant. The place was not a success initially. Today though, he presides over a mini-empire, with a portfolio of nine restaurants, each of which is extremely popular and profitable. He is back on television as well. This dramatic reversal of fortune is a direct result of changing attitudes to homosexuality. While society in general still does not approve of Mr. Hong’s lifestyle, a great many young people now fully accept same-sex relationships.
Powder and Rouge
Homosexuality is hardly a modern concept. Anyone even remotely acquainted with Greek or Roman, not to mention samurai, history is well aware that homosexual love was accepted in many communities in the world. In Korea, Confucianism, a conservative moral code, put great emphasis on the need for individuals to marry and produce children to continue their family line. Yet, here too, despite Confucianism’s long and profound influence, we can find evidence for the existence of homosexual relationships down through the centuries.
The most commonly cited example is King Kongmin, the Koryo dynasty monarch who reigned from 1351 to 1374. Scholars such as Professors Kim Young-gwan and Hahn Sook-ja at Pyeongtaek University state that, following the death of his wife, Kongmin kept a coterie of jajewi, handsome young men selected as lovers. One of Kongmin’s predecessors, Chungseon, who reigned briefly in 1298 and then from 1308 to 1313, is also believed to have had a long-term male lover.
Though such relations were, according to some sources, quite common among the elite during the Koryo dynasty, tolerance of homosexuality declined in the Joseon era. King Sejong the Great himself was advised by ministers to disown his daughter-in-law for the crime of having sexual relations with maidservants. This case has the rare distinction of being recorded in royal documents. We can probably infer that the scarcity of such tales in official records is more a result of the aversion and taboo that had by then developed than an indication of the absence of homosexual practices. Indeed, homosexuality was still practiced widely, particularly among country folk.
Richard Rutt, an Anglican priest who spent many years in Korea and eventually became Bishop of Daejeon in 1968, wrote extensively about Korean culture and history. He stated that, in spite of official Joseon opposition to the practice, “homosexuality was well known in rural society during the Yi (Joseon) Dynasty (1392–1910),” adding that older men in Gyeonggi Province had told him that same-sex relations had remained commonplace among village folk until well into the early twentieth century. His informants reported that such relations had “very little stigma...and would not impair chances of marriage” later. If this is true, it would seem that society actually became more conservative with respect to some sexual practices as the twentieth century wore on—to the point where people not only disliked homosexuality, but also preferred to deny its very existence.
There are also those who claim that the Hwarang, the Shilla dynasty’s proud fighting force (and a symbol of Korean militarism), was somewhat homoerotic in character. Verses celebrating particular Hwarang, such as “Song of Yearning for the Flower Boy Taemara,” were “seen as illustrating a Hwarang penchant for sexual intercourse with same-sex partners,” claim Professors Kim Young-gwan and Hahn Sook-ja. This may be a step too far, although it is worth noting the following comments by the Tang dynasty Chinese official Cheng Ling-hu, who wrote: “They selected handsome sons of the elite and adorned them with powder and rouge. They call them Hwarang. The people all revere and serve them. Good generals and brave soldiers are produced by reason of it.”
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
During the Joseon era, namsadang—bands of itinerant male performers who would travel from town to town and sing, act, and do acrobatics—were popular among the general population, despite coming from the cheonmin, the lowest social class. It is believed that male-to-male prostitution and general homosexual activity were widespread among such troupes, especially among a class of namsadang performer called midong (beautiful boy). The namsadang tradition continued up until the 1910s, when the colonizing Japanese put an end to it as part of their efforts to stamp out Korean culture.
One of the most popular Korean films of the recent golden era, The King and the Clown (2005), made great dramatic use of this theme. The story concerns one such namsadang performer, who would be described as a kkotminam (“pretty flower boy”) in the current parlance. This young man, Gonggil, wins the affections of King Yeonsan, perhaps the most brutal monarch of the Joseon period. The film, which sold 12 million movie tickets in this country of 48 million, bears the original Korean title of Wang-ui Namja, which translates to the rather more direct “King’s Man.”
Lee Jun-ki, the actor who played said king’s man, is one of several male stars who derive their popularity from their prettiness. In the early 1990s, the dominant style of male representation in the entertainment industry was macho, but for some time now the kkotminam has reigned supreme. There are also boy bands such as 2AM, whose style, which features heavy makeup and elaborate hairstyling, is undoubtedly androgynous and, to the eyes of the more worldly, homoerotic.
Yet, at the same time, any celebrity who chose to come out would be putting their career in jeopardy. Several very famous Korean stars whose homosexuality is an open secret within the industry would find themselves bereft of the lucrative advertising and sponsorship opportunities that provide the bulk of celebrity earnings if they ever actually announced the fact publicly.
Hong Seok-chon
The one person who knows this better than anyone is Hong Seok-chon, who to this day divides public opinion. On a variety show in September 2000, another guest jokingly asked him if he preferred men or women. Disbelief ensued when he gave them the honest answer. Producers edited this exchange out of the show, but a journalist later got wind of the story and asked him about it, and again, Mr. Hong, who had been thinking for some time that he “didn’t want to live a double life” any more, decided to repeat his admission.
The result was public uproar. He had broken the taboo that “we didn’t talk about the gay issue in Korea,” and he paid the price. He received death threats and, despite being the most talked about person in the country at the time, “had no work for three years.” To this day, with his career in recovery, he is still never chosen to represent Korean companies in advertising. For this reason, he defends other celebrities who refuse to come out, saying: “They know I lost everything.”
Following the setback to his acting career, he opened a restaurant (Our Place) in the Seoul district of Itaewon. For the first twelve months, he consistently lost money because of a lack of customers, and, to make matters worse, many of the people who did show up merely came to shout abuse at him.
What Came Next
In time, Our Place enjoyed a turnaround in fortune. Over the next eight years, Mr. Hong opened eight more restaurants and became a wealthy man. Streets where he set up shop would be transformed as other restaurateurs and bar owners followed his lead. His personal brand, which had once been poison, started to work in his favor. TV producers, though never quite as ardent as in the days prior to September 2000, began to call him again.
The new interest from producers stemmed from what Mr. Hong calls the “big change, which happened so fast.” While nobody would claim that homosexuality is truly tolerated by Korean society in general, there has been a shift in attitude, and Mr. Hong is the one person most responsible for it. His public announcement “forced [people] to think deeply...and start to talk.” He believes that it is now becoming possible for a gay person to come out and not face the ruin of his career and the abandonment of friends, as would have likely happened in the very recent past.
These days he is regularly invited to universities to speak to groups of up to five hundred at a time. He says that young people do not care about his sexuality and respond well to his message that “we are not that different... We are not aliens from another cosmos.” Among his public activities, he considers these speaking engagements to be the most important, because the young audience members “will be bosses ten or twenty years from now.” He wants them to remember his message then and not refuse to hire people on the grounds of what they do in their private lives.
In 2010, a popular TV drama series entitled Life Is Beautiful featured a same-sex relationship between the two main characters. Less than a decade earlier, portraying even a minor character as homosexual would have been unthinkable. Indeed, writer Kim Soo-yeon tried repeatedly over the years to insert gay characters into her screenplays, only to be rebuffed by producers.
General Attitudes
No one should mistake such developments for change at all levels of society. Though many people—particularly twenty- and thirty-something urbanites and those of artistic or creative backgrounds—consider Mr. Hong a hero (or perhaps just enjoy going to his restaurants), have gay friends, or support the legalization of same-sex marriage, a poll by the Pew Research Center in 2007 found that 77 percent of Koreans believe that “homosexuality should be rejected.” The change at present is among a particular subset of the population. Whether or not this group will remain tolerant as they grow older, and pass this attitude on to their own children, remains to be seen.
For lesbians in South Korea, life is by most accounts even more difficult than for gay males. In traditional Confucian thinking, a woman’s duty is to marry and have children, even more so than it is a man’s, and this belief still lingers in contemporary Korean society. According to some lesbians, even the male homosexual community is not particularly welcoming towards them. Mr. Hong and others term lesbians a “double minority,” in that they suffer not merely from prejudice and misunderstandings about their sexuality but also from the remnants of general sexism that women are striving to defeat.
For both gays and lesbians, the legal environment is tough. Though homosexuality was never illegal in South Korea, the right to civil partnership for gays has never existed and probably never will. Mr. Hong feels that, despite the changes that are taking place, it unlikely that society will ever give him and his partner the same rights as heterosexual couples, because of residual Confucianism and the influence of a more recent arrival, fundamentalist Christianity.
In 2007, an anti-discrimination law was proposed in order to protect minorities, including sexual minorities. Christian activists, who, as in the United States, tend to be socially conservative and politically powerful, lobbied extensively against the bill. Due to this pressure, the parts of the bill pertaining to homosexuality were removed, and eventually the whole bill was withdrawn. The election of Presbyterian president Lee Myung-bak in December 2007 meant there was no chance legal protection for lesbians and gays would be introduced, for he himself has publicly described homosexuals as “abnormal.”
Korea’s first Christian martyrs were executed for refusing to perform Jesa, the Confucian rite to commemorate ancestors. Now the twin forces of Confucianism and Christianity seem to have combined to produce a brand of conservatism regarding sexuality that gay people will find very difficult to overcome. Yet Korea is a place where diverse philosophical and religious traditions have somehow learned to live with each other. The proportion of the population who are neither conservative Christians nor adherents of Confucian morality will grow increasingly tolerant of homosexuality. Society as a whole may never treat gay people equally, but it will be possible for them to live more honestly and openly as time goes by.