[KS] Korean Queer Studies Forum: A Call to Convene

[Todd Henry]

Could you kindly post the following message to the list?  Thanks.

Best,

Todd A. Henry
PhD Candidate in History, UCLA
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Korean Queer Studies Forum: A Call to Convene

Queer life in South Korea is at a crossroads.  2003 has seen both the 
suicide of a 19-year-old gay man named Yun Hy?-s?, who chose to die rather 
than submit to the oppressive norms imposed on him by Korean society, and a 
parade of jubilant queer men, women, and their friends, who marched together 
from the symbolically significant Pagoda Park down Chongno.  Many other less 
noticeable but equally significant events have been taking place, 
developments that shed light both on the status of Korea’s queer communities 
and their evolving relationships with South Korea’s rapidly changing 
mainstream of society, politics, and culture.

Unfortunately, these developments receive almost no attention in the 
country’s press, by Korean academics, or through the activities of overseas 
scholars, activists and other concerned individuals.  When Korean newspapers 
do cover such issues, the existence of non-normative sexuality and gender is 
often erased from the discussion all together, filled instead with 
statements that reinforce a hetero-normative status quo.  Outside of the 
media, academic debate about queer issues at Korea‘s universities still 
remains something of a taboo, carried on largely by a few underground 
intellectuals who are forced to talk about non-normative gender and 
sexuality through already marginalized programs such as women’s studies.  
Although queer groups now exist on Korean university campuses, pressures to 
conform to prescriptive notions of sexuality require that they carry out 
many of their activities in anonymity.  Such a context feeds into a campus 
culture that provides important opportunities for social and cultural 
inter-actions, but discourages active discussions of important issues like 
how to deal with colleagues at school and in the workplace, how to navigate 
complex family relations including the unequivocal expectation of marriage, 
and a host of other pressing issues.  With the exception of translations 
from American and European studies on gender and sexuality outside of the 
Korean context, there is, to this date, not one Korean-language book that 
students can read on queer issues specifically pertaining to the Korea.    
Furthermore, few scholars of Korea working outside of the peninsula have 
taken up the important historical, economic, social, political and cultural 
issues that are crucial to both a theoretical and practical knowledge of the 
obstacles faced by the queer communities in the context of an emerging 
“civil society?in contemporary South Korea.

The following call for the creation of a Korean Queer Studies Forum is 
informed by this situation ?that is, the perceived absence of a critical 
intellectual discussion on issues of importance to the queer communities of 
South Korea, in spite of their relevance to the contemporary situation both 
in and outside of the peninsula.  We, therefore, are seeking to gather a 
body of critically minded scholars, journalists, artists and other concerned 
individuals who are willing to discuss these issues and work together to put 
them in print.  We hope that this forum will include both Korean and 
non-Korean citizens alike, as trans-national links will be an important way 
for us to gather diverse ideas and ways to approach the issues of our 
debate.  We hope to convene a preliminary meeting in Seoul late this year 
(2003) or early next year (2004), for those of you who will be in Korea at 
that time.  In the meantime, we would like to gather a list of individuals 
who are already working on queer issues relating to Korea, and who might be 
interested in participating in this forum (ie. via a bilingual internet 
site).  If so, please forward to the following email address 
(htodd98 at hotmail.com) your name, affiliation (if you have one), area of 
interest, and contact information (email and/or phone number).  Once we hear 
back from interested individuals, we will send out an email announcing the 
time and place of the preliminary meeting.

We thank all of you in advance for your interest and concern in this 
endeavor.


In solidarity,

Todd Henry (PhD Candidate in History, University of California-Los Angeles)
S?Dong-jin (PhD Candidate in Sociology, Yonsei University)

Forum Co-Founders/Organizers

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