https://www.scribd.com/document/548470525/Queer-Korea
Queer Korea Paperback – 21 February 2020
by Todd A. Henry (Editor)
4.4 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Korean people have faced successive waves of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes, forced dispersal, and divided development. Throughout these turbulent times, "queer" Koreans were ignored, minimized, and erased in narratives of their modern nation, East Asia, and the wider world. This interdisciplinary volume challenges such marginalization through critical analyses of non-normative sexuality and gender variance. Considering both personal and collective forces, the contributors extend individualized notions of queer neoliberalism beyond those typically set in Western queer theory. Along the way, they recount a range of illuminating topics, from shamanic rituals during the colonial era and B-grade comedy films under Cold War dictatorship to female masculinity among today's youth and transgender confrontations with the resident registration system. More broadly, Queer Korea offers readers new ways of understanding the limits and possibilities of human liberation under exclusionary conditions of modernity in Asia and beyond.
Contributors. Pei Jean Chen, John (Song Pae) Cho, Chung-kang Kim, Timothy Gitzen, Todd A. Henry, Merose Hwang, Ruin, Layoung Shin, Shin-ae Ha, John Whittier Treat
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"Queer Korea reads Korean modern history through a queer lens.... Ultimately, this queer reading proves a significant endeavour for interpreting history in a dense and multilayered way, which allows us to understand it more profoundly and thoroughly."--Kyungtae Kim "Pacific Affairs" (9/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)
"The essays in Todd A. Henry's masterful edited collection explore queerness...as a site to theorize and critique the fundamentally heteropatriarchal nature of South Korean society.... Queer Korea will, I believe, become a seminal text on gender and sexuality in Korea that will energize the theorization and practice of ethnographers of Korea and Asia for many years to come."--Thomas Baudinette "Asian Ethnology" (7/15/2021 12:00:00 AM)
"The new anthology Queer Korea . . . is, without doubt, a remarkable and long overdue scholarly effort that fundamentally advances the development and diversity of Asian queer studies in the post-2020 era. . . . Queer Korea is an illuminating, theoretically robust, and beautifully written scholarly work. . . ."--Jamie J. Zhao "Journal of Asian Studies" (5/17/2021 12:00:00 AM)
"Queer Korea bridges the gap between Korean studies and queer studies by decentering both from their disciplinary limitations--Korean studies from its ethnonationalist and heteronormative assumptions, and queer studies from its focus on identity politics privileging the United States and other Euro-American liberal societies.... Queer Korea is an instant classic...."--So-Rim Lee "Journal of Korean Studies" (3/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)
"The text has something to offer all students of Korean or Asian studies. Above all, this book succeeds in its primary goal of engaging a queer studies audience seeking to understand the crucial context Korea provides as a site of colonial and postcolonial modernity."--S. G. Jug "Choice" (10/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)
"Queer Korea sets a very high standard for future scholarship on Korea that productively engages with queer theory and the globalization of queer studies. With the appearance of this book ... teachers too are now well-positioned to offer courses on the intersections of queer culture and modern Korean history."--Samuel Perry "European Journal of Korean Studies" (10/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)
"A fascinating and pathbreaking work of scholarship that combines historical, social science, and cultural analysis to shatter a host of shibboleths about Korean sexuality and relationships, gives voice to the voiceless, and brings Korean queerness fully into the mainstream of Korean and East Asian studies!"--Carter J. Eckert, author of "Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea: The Roots of Militarism, 1866-1945"
"The contributors elegantly limn the messy boundaries and porous enclosures of the heteronormative and the 'queer', putting into sharp relief the relatively unexplored areas of non-normative Korea. Queer Korea is full of remarkable interventions and exciting possibilities, and its contributors deploy Korean cultural and historical experiences for an energized critique of queer theory."--Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of "Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora"
About the Author
Todd A. Henry is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945.
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Queer Korea
(Perverse Modernities)
by Todd A. Henry (Editor), Layoung Shin (Contributor), John Whittier Treat (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Eno Pei Jean Chen (Contributor), Timothy Gitzen (Contributor), John (Song Pae) Cho (Contributor), Ruin S.M. Pae (Contributor), Shin-ae Ha (Contributor), more…
4.13 · Rating details · 15 ratings · 2 reviews
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Korean people have faced successive waves of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes, forced dispersal, and divided development. Throughout these turbulent times, “queer” Koreans were ignored, minimized, and erased in narratives of their modern nation, East Asia, and the wider world. This interdisciplinary volume challenges such marginalization through critical analyses of non-normative sexuality and gender variance. Considering both personal and collective forces, contributors extend individualized notions of queer neoliberalism beyond those typically set in Western queer theory. Along the way, they recount a range of illuminating topics, from shamanic rituals during the colonial era and B-grade comedy films under Cold War dictatorship to toxic masculinity in today’s South Korean military and transgender confrontations with the resident registration system. More broadly, Queer Korea offers readers new ways of understanding the limits and possibilities of human liberation under exclusionary conditions of modernity in Asia and beyond. (less)
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Expected publication: March 25th 2022 by Duke University Press
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saïd
Jan 28, 2022saïd rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: queer, 2_nonfiction, hangeul
This is an incredibly important volume. Queer studies in South Korea is still a nascent subject, and, although the majority opinion is neutral to positive on queer and LGBT issues, queer South Koreans still face considerable hardships in their day-to-day lives, including a pervasive and persistent narrative, primarily from the country's Protestant population, of erasure that claims queer sexuality either doesn't exist in traditional Korean culture or is a foreign import from the Western world. This is, of course, nonsense; there have been many queer Koreans throughout history, both before and after Confucianism in Korea. (less)
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Etienne RP
Apr 09, 2021Etienne RP rated it really liked it
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South Korea Meets the Queer Nation
On March 3, 2021, Byun Hui-su, South Korea’s first transgender soldier who was discharged from the military the year before for having gender reassignment surgery, was found dead in her home. Her apparent suicide drew media attention to transphobia and homophobia in the army and in South Korean society at large. According to Todd Henry, who edited the volume Queer Korea published by Duke University Press in 2020, “LGBTI South Koreans face innumerable obstacles in a society in which homophobia, transphobia, toxic masculinity, misogyny, and other marginalizing pressures cause an alarmingly high number of queers (and other alienated subjects) to commit suicide or inflict self-harm.” Recently people and organizations claiming LGBT identity and rights have gained increased visibility. The city of Seoul has had a Gay Pride parade since 2000, and in 2014 its mayor Park Won-soon suggested that South Korea become the first country to legalize gay marriage—but conservative politicians as well as some so-called progressives blocked the move, and the mayor committed suicide linked to a #metoo scandal in 2020. Short of same-sex unions, most laws and judicial decisions protecting LGBT rights are already on the books or in jurisprudence, and society has moved towards a more tolerant attitude regarding the issue. Nonetheless, gay and lesbian Koreans still face numerous difficulties at home and work, and many prefer not to reveal their sexual orientation to family, friends or co-workers. Opposition to LGBT rights comes mostly from Christian sectors of the country, especially Protestants, who regularly stage counter-protests to pride parades, carrying signs urging LGBT people to “repent from their sins.” In these conditions, some sexually non-normative subjects eschew visibility and remain closeted, or even give up sexuality and retreat from same-sex communities as a survival strategy.
Queer studies in a Korean context
There is also a dearth of books and articles addressing gay and lesbian cultures or gender variance in South Korean scholarship. Unlike the situation prevailing on North American university campuses, queer studies still haven’t found a place in Korean academia. Students at the most prestigious Korean universities (SNU, Korea University, Yonsei, Ehwa…) have created LGBT student groups and reading circles, but graduate students who specialize in the field face a bleak employment future. Many scholars who contributed to Queer Korea did it from a perch in a foreign university or from tier-two colleges in South Korea. This volume nonetheless demonstrates the vitality of the field and the fecundity of applying a queer studies approach to Korean history and society. The authors do not limit themselves to gay and lesbian studies: a queer perspective also includes cross-gender identification, non-binary identities, and homosocial longings that fall outside the purview of sexuality. Queer theory also takes issue with a normative approach emphasizing political visibility, human rights, and multicultural diversity as the only legitimate forms of collective mobilization. Queer-of-color critiques point out that power dynamics associating race, class, gender expression, sexuality, ability, culture and nationality influence the lived experiences of individuals and groups that hold one or more of these identities. Asian queer studies have shown that tropes of the “closet” and “coming out” may not apply to societies where the heterosexual family and the nation trump the individual and inhibit the expression of homosexuality. In addition, as postcolonial studies remind us, South Korea is heir to a history of colonialism, Cold War, and authoritarianism that has exacerbated the hyper-masculine and androcentric tendencies of the nation.
Some conservatives in South Korea hold the view that “homosexuality doesn’t exist in Korean culture” and that same-sex relations were a foreign import coming from the West (North Koreans apparently share this view.) This is, of course, absurd: although Confucianism repressed same-sex intercourse and limited sexuality to reproductive ends, throughout Korean history some men and women are known to have engaged in homoerotic activity and express their love for a person of the same sex. To limit oneself to the twentieth century, there is a rich archival record relating to same-sex longings and sensuality, cross-gender identification, and non-normative intimacies that the authors of Queer Korea were able to exploit. Homosexuality didn’t have to be invented or imported: it was present all along, albeit in different cultural forms and personal expressions. Close readings of literary texts, research into historical archives, surveys of newspapers and periodicals, visual analysis of movies and pictures, and participatory observation or social activism allow each contributor to produce scholarship on a neglected aspect of Korean history and society. But it is also true that persons that were sexually attracted to the same sex lacked role models or conceptual schemes that would have helped them make sense of their inclination. They were kept “in the dark” about the meaning of homosexuality as anything but a temporary aberrant behavior, a perverted desire that ordinary men “slipped” or “fell into” (ppajida), especially in the absence of female partners. The strong bondings that girls and young women developed in the intimacy of all-female classrooms and dormitories was seen with more leniency, but was considered as a temporary arrangement before they entered adulthood and marriage. As a result of the authoritarian ideology of the family-state, official information about non-normative sexualities such as homosexuality was highly restricted. Many men and women attracted to the same sex were confused and morally torn about their desires.
The elusive Third Miracle of the Han River
An optimistic view alleges that sexual minority rights with follow the path of economic development and democratization, only with some delay. According to this view, the “miracle of the Han river” occurred in three stages. A country totally destroyed by the Korean War transformed itself in less than three decades from a Third World wastebasket to an Asian economic powerhouse, becoming the 12th largest economy in terms of GDP. The second miracle occurred when democratic forces toppled the authoritarian regime and installed civilian rule and democratic accountability. The third transformation may be currently ongoing and refers to the mobilization of civil society to achieve equal rights for all, openness to multiculturalism, and women’s empowerment. But this teleological view neglects the fact that an emerging market economy can always shift to reverse mode: economic crises may sweep away hard-won gains, the rule of law may be compromised by ill-fated politicians, and social mobilizations may face a conservative backlash. This is arguably what is happening in South Korea these days. To limit oneself to sexual minority rights, the current administration has backpedalled on its promise to pass an anti-discrimination law; the legalization of same-sex-marriages still faces strong opposition; and homophobic institutions such as the army or schools fail to provide legal protection for gender-variant or sexually non-normative persons. The failure of LGBT communities to adopt a distinctive gay, lesbian, or trans culture and follow the path of right-based activism should not be seen as an incapacity to challenge the hetero-patriarchal norms of traditional society in favor of a transgressive and non-normative identity politics. As John (Song Pae) Cho notes, “For Korean gay men who had been excluded from the very category of humanity, simply existing as ordinary members of society may be considered the most transgressive act of all.”
The current backlash against homosexuality is not a return to a previous period of sexual repression and self-denial. It is triggered by economic necessity in the face of financial insecurity, labor market flexibility, and a retreating welfare state. John Cho shows that the three phases of male homosexuality within South Korea’s modern history were intrinsically linked to economic development. The “dark period” of South Korea’s homosexuality during the late developmentalist period, from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, was followed by a brief flowering of homosexual communities fueled by the Internet and the growing economy. But this community-building phase was undermined by the family-based restructuring that accompanied South Korea’s transformation into a neoliberal economy. As a response to the IMF crisis of 1997, the Korean state revived the older ideology of “family as nation” and “nation as family.” It used family, employment, and other social benefits to discriminate against non-married members of society and discipline non-normative populations who did not belong to the heterosexual nuclear family. Many single gay men in their thirties and forties were forced to “retreat” and “retire” from homosexuality to focus on self-development and financial security that often took the form of marriage with the opposite sex. Other gay men turned to money as the only form of security in a neoliberal world. In her chapter titled “Avoiding T’ibu (Obvious Butchness)”, Layoung Shin shows that young queer women who used to cultivate a certain masculinity, wearing short hair and young men’s clothing to emulate the look of boy bands’ idols, reverted to a strategy of invisibility and gender conformity to avoid discrimination at school and on the job market. The choice of invisibility is rendered compulsory in the army, where the Korean military even uses “honey traps” on gay dating apps to root out and expel gay military personnel.
Fighting against homophobia and transphobia
In such a context, developing queer studies in South Korea is going against the grain of powerful societal forces, and this may account for the militant tone adopted by many contributors to this volume. John Cho concludes his article on “The Three Faces of South Korea’s Male Homosexuality” by stating that the homophobic backlash is “ushering in a new period of neofascism in Korean history.” Layoung Shin emphasizes that “we cannot blame young queer women’s avoidance of masculinity,” and formulates the hope that “our criticism may offer them the courage to not fear punishment and harassment or bullying at school, which an antidiscrimination bill would remedy.” Timothy Gitzen exposes the “toxic masculinity” of South Korea’s armed forces where, on the basis of an obscure clause in the military penal code, dozens of soldiers who purportedly engage in anal sex are hunted down and imprisoned, even though they met partners during sanctioned periods of leave and in the privacy of off-base facilities. An independent researcher and transgender activist named Ruin, who self-identifies as a “zhe,” shows that bodies that do not conform to strict boundaries between men and women face intense scrutiny and various forms of discrimination, consolidated by institutions and norms such as the first digit in the second part of national ID numbers which are used for all kinds of procedures like getting a mobile phone or registering for employment and social benefits. Zhe claims that “this problem cannot be solved by legal reform; on the contrary, abolishing these legal structures altogether may be a more fundamental and effective solution,” as ID numbers were introduced to exclude and persecute “ppalgaengi” citizens suspected of pro-Communist sympathies during the Korean War. Todd Henry, the volume editor, notes that homophobia and transphobia are not limited to South (and North) Korea and that queer and transgender people in the United States face the added risk of being brutally murdered by gun-toting individuals.
But the most transgressive moves in Queer Korea may be the attempt to reframe history and revisit the literary canon using queer lenses and critical approaches inspired by queer theory. Remember that some conservative critics pontificate that “homosexuality didn’t exist in Korea” before it was introduced from abroad. In a way they are right: the word “same-sex love” (tongsongae) was translated from the Japanese dōseiai and was introduced under colonial modernity at the same time as “romantic love” (yonae) and “free marriage” (chayu kyoron). Colonial society allowed certain groups, such as schoolgirls, to engage in spiritual same-sex love to keep young people away from heterosexual intercourse. Pairs of high school girls formed a bond of sistership (ssisuta) and vowed they would “never marry and instead love each other eternally.” But during this period, “love” had little to do with sexual and romantic desire, and society relied on conjugal and filial conventions that privileged men at the expense of women. High school girls were expected to “graduate” from same-sex love and to serve as “wise mothers and good wives” (hyonmo yangcho). Those who didn’t and who tragically committed double suicides (chongsa) or led their lives as New Women (shin yoja) attracted a great deal of contentious debates and literary attention. Meanwhile, namsaek (“male color”) and tongsongae (homosexuality) between men was medicalized and pathologized as an abnormal behavior discussed along the same lines as rape, bigamy, and sexual perversion (songjok tochak). Whereas male spiritual bonding (tongjong) and physical intimacy known nowadays as skinship were tolerated and even sometimes encouraged, there seems to have emerged a fixation on anal sex (kyegan, “chicken rape”) that is shared today by the military and conservative Christian groups.
Drag queens and cross-dressers
Traditional Korea also had its drag queens and cross-dressers. The male shamans and healers (mugyok, nammu, baksu), female fortunetellers and spiritists (mudang, posal), and the so-called flower boys (hwarang) practiced cross-dressing, sex change, and gender fluidity avant la lettre. Transgendered shamans passed as women by dressing, talking, and behaving as women, while women practitioners of kut ceremonies donned kings’ and warriors’ robes and channelled the voice of male gods and spirits. Despised by traditional Korean society, they formed guilds and associations under Japanese occupation and assimilated with official shinto religion to get political favor. Under their theory of “two peoples, one civilization,” Japanese scholars claimed that Korean shamanism and Japanese Shintō shared a common origin. Meanwhile, well-known historians such as Ch’oe Nam-son and Yi Nung-hwa exploited the precolonial traditions of these marginalized women and men to forge a glorious story of the nation, one that re-centered Korea and Manchuria in a larger continental culture of shamanism... (less)
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