[KS] Re: Public awareness of homosexuality in South Korea

[Nancy Lee]

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On 02-Oct-00, k u s h i b o wrote:
 
> And that leads to my primary question: does anyone know of some relevant
> resources on homosexuality in Korea, either currently or historically? 

Well, the HanQueerean page at  

http://www.otherwise.net/HanQ/

gives links to lesbian/gay Korean/Korean-American sites.  I haven't
checked them out myself, but there they are.  There's also a page of gay
Korean links at:

http://www.fortunecity.com/village/jamesdean/91/links.html

but most of them are highly un-scholarly and a lot of them don't work.

And if your Korean is better than mine, you could take a look at 

http://comingout2000.org/

and see if it's helpful or not.  I gather the picture is the actor in
question.


> I
> know someone who is thinking of doing her research in this field, in the
> wake of Hong's coming out, but also I want a little "ammunition" against
> some of the outrageous claims made by our producers who are
> rationalizing the decision to give Hong the axe. Claims that
> homosexuality didn't exist before Korea's "westernization" 

Well, the *concept* of "homosexuality" seems to have been a relatively
recent western invention.  My guess is that if you found a Koreanist who
was a scholar in gay/lesbian studies, and asked them whether
homosexuality existed in Korea before westernization, instead of
answering your question they would start deconstructing the world
"homosexuality."

Completely unscholarly anecdote here: a Korean immigrant once told me
that she she couldn't understand what "all the fuss" about gay men and
lesbians in America is about.  She said, "We don't have gays and
lesbians in Korea.  There's no such thing!"  She then proceeded to tell
me that her best friend at Ewha in the 1940's, was widely known to have
been having a love affair with a female professor.  "Everybody knew
about it, but we never called them lesbians."

Since I do not speak Korean and that conversation was in English, I
can't tell you how she would have said it in Korean.  But I gathered the
impression that as far as she knew, two women who have sex together were
just regarded as two women who have sex together, they weren't regarded
by others as a separate species or subculture.  (But only they know how
they regarded themselves.)


Cheers,

Nancy