‘LGBTQ-friendly society is safer for everyone’: candidates
Progressive election candidates step up to make Korea more inclusive
Oh Seung-jae, 24, a gay man running for a Seoul Metropolitan Council seat as a proportional representative for the minor progressive Justice Party, decided to become a politician after watching a televised debate during the 2017 presidential election. Oh said he wanted to give fellow sexual minorities a greater say in the policymaking process.
“Former President Moon Jae-in and conservative politician Hong Joon-pyo were participating in the debate and publicly said that they ‘opposed’ homosexuality,” Oh told The Korea Times, Monday.
He said that it was at that moment that he realized the world wouldn’t change unless politicians change. And thus, he decided to become an agent of change on behalf of the LGBTQ community.
Oh took action by protesting in front of the National Assembly the day after the televised debate and joined the Justice Party later that year. He served as the Justice Party’s spokesperson from last November to April of this year and is currently the vice chairman of the party’s human rights team. Oh said he declared his bid to run in the election in order to give sexual minorities more representation.
Ryu Se-a, 31, is another candidate who shares Oh’s point of view. As a transgender woman, she has always felt the need to bring sexual minority rights issues to the political table.
“By running the campaign, I wanted to show people that people like
me exist around them — a lot closer than they think,” Ryu said.
Also a transgender rights activist and the head of the sexual minorities committee at the party’s Gyeonggi Province branch, she thought that if somebody had to run, she was ready for it. Ryu chose her campaign slogan
as, “Your dignity is always with you.”
According to a report released earlier this month by the domestic LGBTQ advocacy group Dawoom about the lives of sexual minorities in Korea, 97 percent of young LGBTQ people believe that Korea is “not a good country for sexual minorities to live in.”
If elected, Ryu said she plans to expand the human rights impact assessment — which analyzes the impact of government policies and their implementation on human rights — as well as carry out gender equality education at government offices and public health facilities to minimize and prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“There are still widespread misconceptions about sexual minorities in our society. Transgender people are mistakenly perceived as sex workers and some people still think that sexual minorities as a whole are all HIV carriers, and seem to fixate mainly on gay men,” Ryu said.
Change is desperately needed, especially in the public health sector, where the binary understanding of gender as being only either female or male has long been the norm, and which has created a healthcare blind spot for sexual minorities.
The latest report by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea showed that 27 percent of LGBTQ respondents in the past 12 months had given up on going to medical facilities regardless of their health condition because of their gender identity.
Regardless of gender identity, LGBTQ rights have been emerging as a political issue for more candidates running in the local elections.
Kwak Su-jin, 37, is running in the by-election to become a lawmaker from Seoul’s southern Gwanak District. She promises to build a safe community for sexual minorities because she believes that an LGBTQ-friendly space is safer for everyone, including single-person households and senior citizens.
She plans to provide financial support for young people and sexual minorities in the district who are estranged from their families. During her campaign, Kwak said that even the most difficult residents of the district, including conservative Christians who have not always welcomed the minorities, are convinced that it is the job of community leaders to protect the weak and vulnerable.
Kwon Soo-joung, the Seoul city mayoral candidate of the Justice Party, promised not only to welcome and permit the Seoul Queer Culture Festival to take place at Seoul Square this summer, but also to sponsor it on the metropolitan government level and participate in the event herself, if she gets elected.
The Seoul Queer Culture Festival preparation committee attempted to register itself as a corporation, but after years of delays, the Seoul Metropolitan Government rejected it last August. The committee applied for permission from the city government to use Seoul Square for the festival, but the city government has still not responded, violating the deadline of 48 hours that it is supposed to take to respond to all requests.
Oh said he has grown immune to people’s hate comments and jokes about his sexuality. What hurts him more is when people don’t take LGBTQ issues seriously and give them lower priority than other issues.
“I’ve heard some people say, ‘Our lives are so difficult right now, we don’t have time to think about the lives of sexual minorities.’ That’s when I struggle as a politician. It’s a matter of life and death to us, but many people view it as a controversy or a secondary issue,” Oh said.
The candidates unanimously emphasized the importance of local politics and its potential to bring small but real changes to people’s everyday lives.
Kwak gave the example of Mapo District, where local politicians and civic groups have long raised sexual minority rights issues. Gwanak and Mapo District are similar in the age groups of their constituencies, but she feels that the people of Mapo have become LGBTQ-friendly over the years and open to the discourse, Kwak said.
“I believe that is the job of local politicians. To start with small things that we can do and to make real changes in the community,” Kwak said.
“If the most vulnerable in society can feel safe and dignified, that means everybody can. It’s not about protecting them because they are weak and different, but it’s about building a stronger and better system to guarantee people’s fundamental rights,” Oh explained.