2018 SQCF (Seoul Queer Culture Festival)
TW: Homophobia, Religious Fanaticism
Some Photos from the 19th Seoul Queer Culture Festival, held in 2018. I missed out on the 2019 festival, for I was a soldier at the time and could not risk being identified at the festival.
There’s a new mayor in town, and it requires no stretch of the imagination to ponder a future in which SQCF can no longer be held at City Hall. COVID has also changed public reception to protests and mass public gatherings in general.
So, in honor of the most explosive confluence of hope, self-expression, and survival, here are some previously unpublished photographs from SQCF 2018.
Members of PFLAG Korea (Parents and Families of LGBTAIQ People in Korea) holding signs that say, from left to right, “Every child matters, let’s not discriminate,” “I want to drink water outside in peace, please make gender-neutral bathrooms,” and “We are here! Sexual minorities live among us!”
Times like this, I realize just how thoroughly intertwined religion and nationalism are in Korea. One of the signs reads “Teenage AIDS rates have risen 26 times in the past 14 years!” According to the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, there were 31 newly reported teenage HIV / AIDS patients in 2019.
If there was a steady rate of just one teenage case per year until 2004, the above claim could be technically true. Even then, it would be a deceptive use of statistics. For the entire population, there were 763 new cases in 2004 and 1,222 new cases in 2019. If anything, this roughly 1.6 fold increase is indicative of increased accessibility to testing.
The 2019 report also shows that 53.8 percent of new cases occurred via same-sex contact, and 46.2 percent through heterosexual contact. Why am I saying all this? The whole talking point of “homosexuality causes AIDS!” has been so thoroughly debunked, but the lie persists. Disinformation is effective for a reason. It plays on people’s deepest fears and prejudices, and hides behind online anonymity and plausible deniability.
Multiple layers of ignorance at play:
Why is this old fellow (and the middle-aged fellows in orange and purple) yelling at the cops? Does he think they have the power to shut the festival down?
If the cops let him through, then what does he think will happen? Is he running a martyrdom scenario through his head? A Mad Max-type, “witness me” race through Satan’s servants?
What does he think the Korean flag stands for?
Dozens of women and children dressed in hanbok (traditional Korean clothing), playing Korean drums, each bearing a Korean flag. There’s a difference between “I want my Korea to prosper so that all Koreans can prosper” and “this nation is only for true Koreans." It is the timeless tactic of the oppressor to delineate what is human and what is subhuman.
Whatever happened to men being rational?
This is it. This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. (It’s a meme, just in case you think I’m being serious)
That’s enough airtime for hatred.
Riders for queer liberation. Empowerment is knowing that on this occasion, we are protected. We are allowed to just be. The aggressors in the back can do nothing but watch as we revel in joy and freedom.
Pure bliss.
Marching, marching, marching.
Even Friedrich Nietzsche loved dancing!
Fin.
