The Globality of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival

The Globality of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival:

Subverting the Neocolonial Queer Narrative

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Juwon Lee, B.A.

Graduate Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Ohio State University

2019

Thesis Committee:

Guisela Latorre, Advisor

Mytheli Sreenivas

Copyrighted by

Juwon Lee

2019

Abstract

As the Seoul Queer Culture Festival (the SQCF) organizers have actively incorporated the Western embassies in the recent years, the organizers seem to celebrate the neocolonial narrative that imagines the West as a progressive and modern space for queer subjects. Despite their participation in the narrative on the surface level, I argue that the festival organizers disrupt the binary way of understanding the global order. This thesis project explores the ways in which the Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizers navigate through what I term the neocolonial queer narrative and South Korean queer citizen-making. Drawing on postcolonial feminist thoughts, autoethnography, and cultural analysis, I argue that the organizers subvert such narrative by deploying various resources that are available to them to imagine an alternative belonging. In doing so, this thesis challenges two sets of binarism: (1) “Queer Heaven West/Queer Hell Korea” and

(2) “the Oppressor Western Nations/the Oppressed Korean Organizers.” By challenging the former set of dichotomies, it problematizes the universalization of the Western development of queer subjectivity. At the same time, it also foregrounds the organizers’ agency by questioning the latter narrative that assumes the SQCF organizers as victims of the Western neocolonial imposition. I demonstrate how the organizers subvert the neocolonial queer narrative to resist severe demoralization and vilification by anti-gay right-wing Christian groups while simultaneously imagining transnational solidarity with other Asian queer political actors. The SQCF organizers’ navigation between the neocolonial queer politics and their aspiration for queer citizenship not only offers

alternative discourse of queer belonging but also contributes to the body of scholarship that decenters Euro-American notion of queer subjectivity.

Keywords: queer, modernity, citizenship, globality, Korea, Seoul Pride, Seoul Queer

Culture Festival

iii

Vita

2012...... B.A. Comparative Studies, Ohio State University

2017 to present...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio

State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Vita ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Figures ...... vi Introduction ...... 1 Theoretical Frameworks ...... 4 Neocolonial Queer Narrative ...... 4 South Korean Queer Citizenship ...... 7 Globality ...... 10 Postcolonial Feminist Thought and Postcolonial Queerness ...... 14 Methodology ...... 19 The Seoul Queer Culture Festival 2015 ...... 22 The Triangulation of the Queers, the Nation, and the West ...... 31 The Transnational Solidarity and Globality ...... 37 Conclusion ...... 45 Works Cited ...... 48

List of Figures

Figure 1. The Actors of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival ...... 25 Figure 2. The Structure of the SQCF 2015 ...... 26 Figure 3. The Dates of the SQCF 2015...... 27 Figure 4. The Map of the SQCF Stalls ...... 29 Figure 5. The Triangulation of South Korea and the West ...... 34 Figure 6. The Triangulation of the Anti-gay Demonstrators and the U.S...... 35 Figure 7. The Events of the SQCF 2015 ...... 39

Introduction

When I think about the past four years of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival (the

SQCF, formerly the Korea Queer Culture Festival), it feels surreal that tens of thousands of people would gather to celebrate queer lives in South Korea. I still remember the great excitement and the energy coming from the crowd. Considering how small it was at my first attendance in 2007, it is incredible to see how the festival has grown exponentially during the past decade.

I attended the festival every year from 2015 to 2018. As much as I was excited for the increasing number of people coming to the festival, however, I have always felt sharp discomfort whenever I see the Western embassy stalls at the festival. The embassies appeared in the festival for the first time in 2014 and the number of participating embassies grew since then. Moreover, the invited ambassadors’ endorsement and support of the festival have been a part of the festival’s opening ceremony. Every time I heard

English words coming out from the main stage, I became anxious and skeptical. Given the colonial and imperial history of the U.S. and the contemporary global order of the

Western hegemony, I was never sure what to think of their presence. What are the political meanings of this support from the U.S. and the other Western nation-states?

This thesis project was born out of my discomfort, hoping to understand the presence of the West in the space of South Korean queer citizen-making. As an attempt to reconcile my uneasiness, this project specifically asks the following questions: Do the

SQCF organizers embody or subvert the neocolonial queer narrative, which imagines the

West as an ideal and utopian space for modern queer subjects, with which South Korean queer bodies should keep up? Do they actively participate in the global dichotomy of queer politics where the West is imagined as safe, progressive, and developed, and the

“Rest” as dangerous, regressive, and premodern? Or, rather, do they imagine alternative queer citizenship in the context of South Korea by subverting such a neocolonial narrative? What does this subversion look like and how do they navigate the political status quo surrounding South Korean queer bodies?

I explore the ways in which the Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizers negotiate with what I call the neocolonial queer narrative represented by the embassies and their message for South Korean queer citizen-making. Although they seem to embody the neocolonial queer narrative on the surface level, I argue that the festival organizers disrupt the binary way of understanding the global order that positions the West as the pioneer/oppressor and South Korea as the follower/oppressed. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, autoethnography, and cultural analysis, I demonstrate how the organizers subvert such narrative by deploying various resources that are available to them to imagine alternative belonging.

In what follows, I explain the three theoretical frameworks that I deploy in this project: neocolonial queer narrative, South Korean queer citizenship, and globality. Then

I move on to explain how this project is in conversation with the larger discussion of postcolonial feminism and postcolonial queer studies, followed by my discussion of methodology. In the body part of the thesis, I first explain how the SQCF is structured and examine the moments of rupture and disruption by the organizers. Then I analyze the festival organizers’ interview, press release statements, and news articles to contextualize 2

South Korean queer politics and find subversive moments of the organizers. I also explore the organizers’ engagements with other transnational Asian queer political actors.

In doing so, I aim to foreground the SQCF organizers’ agency.

This thesis project has become a theoretical exploration that allows me to question the West/the rest binaries of global queer politics. While I analyze the festival websites, news media coverage, and the secondary sources to support my argument, I find further research via personal interviews useful. For the future development of this project, I will possibly gather information about the organizers’ political strategies, decision-making process, the agreement and disagreement among the organizers, and their perspective on their relationship with various actors surrounding the festival.

Although I do not explore in depth here, I am also interested in exploring the critical conversation around corporate participation in the festival and the international neoliberal economy, especially in the context of the neoliberalization of the South Korean nation-state since the Asian financial crisis (IMF crisis in South Korea) and their inextricable relation to Korean conglomerates such as Samsung and LG. Furthermore, the question of who attends this festival and who does not should be another inquiry to map out South Korean queer subjectivity. Certainly, not all queer bodies in South Korea endorse or attend the Queer Culture Festivals. The attendees of the festival may or may not share similar visions around queerness. Exploring this complexity of queer bodies and the economic, political, and cultural context will be useful to theorize South Korean queerness for a future project.

Theoretical Frameworks

Neocolonial Queer Narrative By neocolonial queer narrative, I refer to the discourse that assumes the Western nation-states’ alleged progressiveness and modernity based on their legal and institutional incorporation of queer subjects. As postcolonial feminist scholars have argued, the

Western development of modernity has been considered as the universal standard of social “progress” while depoliticizing the West’s continuing colonial legacy over previously and currently colonized states (Mohanty 20-2; 39-41; Abu-Lughod 44-6). The national incorporation of selective queer subjects through same-sex marriage legislation has become one of the yardsticks that measure the level of modernity and social progress in global sexual politics. Not only does such a political discourse buttress the existing binary of the world as “the West” and “the rest,” but it also reinforces the imagination of the West as a utopian space for queer subjects while the so-called “Third World” societies are considered backward, pre-modern, and inherently homophobic and transphobic.

In her recent discussion about the global engagement of the SQCF organizers,

Woori Han frames such a trajectory of global binarism based on national incorporation of queer subjects as “transnational homonationalism.” Han expands on Jasbir Puar’s homonationalism and its transnational development to conceptualize the binary global dynamics of “‘gay-friendly’ and ‘not gay-friendly’ nations” (35). Han argues that homonationalism of the U.S. and the West has transnationally expanded its power to “not

gay-friendly” states, such as South Korea, through homonational governance of the

Western countries.

While Han’s connections to Puar’s homonationalism seem to be logical, I remain skeptical of whether using homonationalism is an appropriate framework to analyze the contemporary global politics of the mid- and late 2010s. First, the homonationalism framework requires the nation-state’s willing deployment of selective queer subjects at the expense of other marginalized groups for a national project. In her book, Puar specifically refers to how the nation-states such as the U.S., along with Israel, Britain, and the Netherlands, actively incorporate “normalized” queer subjects in their national security project at the expense of creating terrorist Muslim “Others” (7; 11). In other words, homonational subjects exist only when a nation is willing to incorporate queer bodies into its nationalist project even if that incorporation is limited or superficial.

However, the South Korean government is far from showing any attempt to include

South Korean queer subjects for any national project. South Korean mandatory military draft policies still pathologize same-sex desires and transgender identification. In 2017, the South Korean Army Chief of Staff, Jang Joon-kyu, allegedly ordered to track down gay soldiers and penalized them on the basis of the military law that criminalizes same- sex sexual engagement. A number of servicepeople were allegedly on the investigation list and one anonymous captain was persecuted (Military Human Rights Center for

Korea). No anti-discrimination protection of LGBTQ and sexual minorities has been established in South Korea even after the first introduction of the comprehensive anti- discrimination bill to the Congress in 2007. The South Korean government shows little interest in recognizing any queer body as a legitimate citizen worthy of protecting. 5

Moreover, the homonationalist incorporation of queer subjects in the United

States has also shown changes due to the shifts of administrative policies. For example, the Donald Trump administration’s volatile decisions to exclude transgender servicepeople from the U.S. military demonstrated a less than progressive policy of queer incorporation. The transition of the U.S. government’s stance on queer inclusion from the

Obama to the Trump administration is ironic because the U.S. embassy still purported its progressiveness in the SQCF during this political transition. For instance, the U.S. embassy hung a rainbow flag on its building to show its support for the SQCF on the day of the festival despite constant policy changes regarding queer citizens in the U.S. (Lee).

Such volatility and contradiction highlight the “fantasy of the permanence” of homonationalism (Puar 4).

Instead of framing the South Korean queer politics as a result of transnational homonationalism, I understand the juxtaposition of the South Korean queer politics with that of the West itself as a particular narrative. The term narrative evokes a Foucauldian understanding of discourse, a structural system of ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and practices that encapsulates the power dynamic of such ideas that reinforce the Western modernity and “the Rest’s” backwardness. At the same time, a narrative also evokes stories that are told constantly and repeatedly. In the endorsement speeches at the opening ceremony of the SQCF 2017, the ambassadors repeatedly narrate similar stories, describing how their nation-state was one of the first to decriminalize homosexuality, to establish anti- discrimination laws, or to legalize same-sex partnership and marriage, and how they are proud to represent nations that strive for “equality for all” ( [2017 Queer Culture Festival

Opening Ceremony]). In this case, the Western representatives physically vocalize the 6

queer narrative at the SQCF, imagining the Western nation-states as the pioneers of

LGBTQ equality in the world, implying that South Korean queer bodies should admire them. The ambassadors’ speeches are a material example of the neocolonial queer narrative. By foregrounding the constructive and hegemonic nature of such narrative, I evoke the possibility that the SQCF organizers challenge the normalization of the narrative.

A critique of the neocolonial queer narrative becomes a tool for me to critically assess the kinds of negotiations the SQCF organizers have to make to achieve their ultimate goals. The organizers do not simply accept the narrative without question although they seem to participate in it. The organizers’ negotiation between the objectives of the festival and the neocolonial queer narrative is a productive space to better understand the complex South Korean queer politics. I will demonstrate how the organizers navigate this political dynamic surrounding queerness, global hegemony, and colonial logics.

South Korean Queer Citizenship I use the term South Korean queer citizenship in this thesis to refer to the national and social belonging of queer bodies, a goal the Seoul Queer Cultural Festival organizers seek out. One aspect of queer citizenship is a state recognition of queer bodies and subjects that guarantees state protection from institutional and social violence. Another aspect is the social and cultural visibility of queer bodies and subjects by the South

Korean public. Here, I understand citizenship as belonging rather than as inclusion or

incorporation in a homonormative sense because the organizers do not directly demand specific policies or legal legislations from the state. Rather, they provide a space where queer activists, queer bodies and subjects, and the public can gather to socialize, network, and celebrate their lives and existence. In other words, while I recognize the importance of the organizers’ visions for political belonging and its material changes of policies through the festival, I focus on the larger scope of belonging and its multifaceted aspects in this project. South Korean queer citizenship evokes a comprehensive understanding of recognition and belonging. The concept also invokes the various ways in which the organizers imagine belonging to South Korean society through the space of SQCF.

My framework of queer citizenship reflects the SQCF organizers’ visions and goals of the festival. The festival’s official website states that the festival objectives are to

"promote sexual minorities' human rights through the visualization of sexual minorities

(to the public)" and to “promote sexual minorities’ pride through enjoying the cultural contents of sexual minorities" (“Introduction”). The first goal demonstrates the organizers’ commitment to the visibility politics that promote legal and political protection of queer bodies by invoking the human rights framework. The second goal indicates the organizers’ emphasis on the appreciation of South Korean queer culture to promote pride and self-assurance. These two goals show that the organizers’ vision of belonging is both political and cultural. While the political and cultural aspects of belonging are not mutually exclusive, I understand the organizers’ queer citizen-making as an attempt to imagine South Korean queer bodies’ belonging beyond the scope of politics and legality.

Han also discusses South Korean queer citizenship but with a different angle.

Drawing from the concepts of developmental citizenship and queer liberalism, she approaches the organizers’ aspiration for queer citizenship as a developmentalist project.

According to Han, developmental queer citizenship refers to an implicit contract between the state and its constituents to pursue Western modernity as an ultimate goal of the nation’s development (W. Han 47). By regarding the organizers’ queer citizenship as a part of developmentalist pursuit and participation of Western queer liberalism, Han defines queer developmental citizenship as the SQCF organizers and South Korean queer subjects’ willingness to participate in the South Korean national project to catch up with the Western modernity (W. Han 47). However, analyzing the SQCF organizers’ aspirations for queer citizenship under the developmental framework runs the risk of reproducing another colonial gaze that relegates the organizers (and South Korean queer bodies) as victims of colonial logics without agency. I am well aware that the developmentalist discourse is pervasive not only in the South Korean queer communities but also in the mainstream society through media portrayal of the West as the ultimate model of modernity. However, postcolonial and transnational feminist scholars have shown us that a colonial encounter is never a unilateral interaction imposed by the colonizer onto the colonized bodies (Moon 3-5; Mohanty 39-41). Rather, colonial subjects are always in a constant negotiation at junctures of colonial encounters, simultaneously embodying and contesting colonial logics while navigating various factors that affect their participation in the hegemony. Relegating the SQCF organizers as well as South Korean queer bodies into monolithic victimhood narrative of neocolonial expansion of the Western hegemony erases their political agency. Instead of participating 9

in the developmentalism, as I explain later, the festival organizers rather utilize the developmentalist discourse perpetuated by the South Korean government officials as well as the nationalist anti-gay demonstrators to pressure and shame them. By framing the organizers’ aspirations for national and cultural belonging as South Korean queer citizenship, I gesture toward the possibility for rupture and disruption against the neocolonial queer narrative in their queer citizen-making.

Globality The limits of developmentalist understanding of queer citizenship challenge the centrality of the West as the vantage point of modernity. Drawing on Edward Said,

Seongsook Moon calls the developmentalist reading of the East Asian modernity as the

“Orientalist dichotomy between the Western self […] and the non-Western other” because the trope of developmentalism of East Asian modernity “overlook[s] historical change in (nationalized) cultures in East Asia and specific power relations defining what constitutes apparently uniform national cultures” (4). Taking up Moon’s postcolonial critique of the Western colonial hegemonic reading, I deploy the concept I call globality to analyze the SQCF organizers’ engagement with global queer politics. Globality indicates the global and transnational aspects that are specific to the SQCF beyond the colonial imagination between South Korea and the West. Globality, therefore, is a theoretical framework that decenters the Western colonial gaze that interprets the SQCF organizers as co-opted by the colonial hegemony and neoliberal economy. It rather offers room to interpret the interaction between the SQCF organizers and the Western

neocolonial narratives from the SQCF organizers’ perspective. The term distinguishes itself from the more well-known term globalization, which denotes the process of global connections between businesses and nation-states within global capitalism. Globality rather evokes the organizers’ willing political and cultural engagement not only with the

Western embassies but also with transnational Asian pride event organizers and queer activists.

Arturo Escobar’s concept of flat ontology and the assemblage theory is useful to understand globality. Examining the Afro-Colombian organization of the rainforest region in Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), Escobar theorizes the modes of activist networks by challenging not only the presupposed hierarchy between the global and the local, but also the global/local binary itself. According to him, flat ontology emphasizes “the assemblages constructed out of composition/decomposition, differential relations, and emergent events and how these result in both systemic orderings (including hierarchies) and open-endedness” (289). In other words, flat ontology allows us to interpret political activism in a specific geographical region as interdependent with the relationality among the assemblages of political actors. Flat ontology does not deny the existence of unequal political power dynamics of these global actors. Rather, it provides a framework to understand the subjectivity of activists without reducing it into a colonial/imperial submission (266).

Following Escobar’s flat ontology, I understand the festival’s globality as evidence to disrupt the binary framework of “the oppressor vs. the oppressed.” Globality positions the organizers’ interactions with the Western embassies as one of their many transnational engagements to realize the festival’s goals of queer citizenship. For 11

example, the festival organizers recognize that the SQCF is a part of the global queer liberation movement that includes the Stonewall uprising that took place in New York during 1960s. Instead of conceptualizing the organizers’ recognition of Stonewall as an embodiment of global hegemony and the imperial project of the U.S. queer discourse, globality allows for room to interpret the organizers’ commemoration of Stonewall as one of the many ways of imagining transnational queer solidarity.

Globality, therefore, shifts our attention away from the colonial reading of the

SQCF organizers’ engagement with the Western embassies as a perpetuation of the neocolonial queer narrative. It disrupts the notion that the organizers are helpless victims of the neocolonial queer narrative without agency, who idolize the Western societies as queer utopia. As demonstrated later, the festival organizers strategically deploy the

Western embassies to pressure the government officials and shame the anti-gay demonstrators. Globality also challenges the colonial reading that overdetermines the

Western embassies as the organizers’ only global engagement in the festival. The organizers actively engage with queer grassroots activists and organizers from other parts of Asia in a more intimate space within the festival. This subversive analysis of the SQCF organizers is possible when we embrace globality as a foundational framework.

Under the framework of globality, I locate the organizers’ agency as their aspiration for the subversive South Korean queer citizenship. In other words, I conceptualize SQCF organizers’ agency as their collective will, intention, and action to imagine South Korean queer citizenship in their own historical, political, cultural, and social situatedness. In her seminal book Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood challenges the

preconceived equivalization between agency and resistance in the field of Women’s

Studies (157). Rather, Mahmood uncouples the two from the equation and writes that:

If the ability to effect change in the world and in oneself is historically and

culturally specific […], then the meaning and sense of agency cannot be

fixed in advance, but must emerge through an analysis of the particular

concepts that enable specific modes of being, responsibility, and

effectivity […] In this sense, agentival capacity is entailed not only in

those acts that resist norms but also in the multiple ways in which one

inhabits norms (14-5).

In other words, Mahmood argues that agency is historically and culturally contextual and there exist various modalities of agency. Her definition of agency is useful because I find the organizers’ constant negotiation that they make as the moments of their agency.

Instead of understanding the organizers’ action as co-optation based on a pre-determined

(Western) notion of resistance, I follow Mahmood and “keep the meaning of agency open and allow it to emerge from” specific political contexts (34).

In this sense, I find the agency of the organizers in their conscious deployment of globality through different political entities. In my analysis of the political context in which the Western ambassadors are deployed at the festival, I locate their agency from their intentional subversion of the dominant political discourse to pressure the government officials and the anti-gay demonstrators. On the other hand, in the analysis of the festival’s globality, I find their agency from the organizers’ active engagement with other Asian pride event organizers and grassroots activists in more intimate spaces within

the festival. Finally, the stark distinction of the ways in which the organizers interacted with these two different global political entities also shows their agency.

Postcolonial Feminist Thought and Postcolonial Queerness

My frameworks of neocolonial queer narrative, South Korean queer citizenship, and globality derive from postcolonial and transnational feminist scholarship.

Postcolonial and transnational feminism provides critical frameworks to challenge the narrative that renders women of the non-West as victims of the “backward and premodern” tradition of their nation-states. Similarly, the postcolonial feminist critique is also useful to think about queer bodies of the non-West. For example, Chandra Mohanty argues that Third-World women are often rendered as the geographical Others who are inherently oppressed with no historical context and political subjectivity by the Western feminist scholarship. Such a portrayal, she writes, “locks all revolutionary struggles into binary structures – possessing power versus being powerless” (Mohanty 39). Instead of investigating how the specific historical and political power structure of gender and sexuality, scholars with such a framework assume that the category of women itself cannot escape from the oppression of regressive patriarchy. The Western colonial gaze forecloses the possibility of an analysis that shows how the non-West women autonomously navigate through systemic power relations. As a way of practicing transnational feminist solidarity, Mohanty calls for challenging the binary of “the oppressor and the oppressed,” which erases Third World women’s complicated historical and political agency. By doing so, Mohanty challenges the linear model of modernity that 14

describes the Western modernity as an end goal for the rest of the world must follow.

Rather, Mohanty advocates for critical analyses of historical and political contexts when theorizing women of the non-West to fully grasp how those women navigate through their specific circumstances to negotiate and contest various forms of hegemony.

Building on this critique of binary formation of the world based on the Western modernity, I embody Mohanty’s radical feminist praxis as a way of practicing feminist solidarity with the SQCF organizers. Moving away from the Western gaze, I disrupt the notions that view the SQCF organizers and queer bodies in South Korea as inherently oppressed victims by the backwardness of the South Korean nation-state as well as the neocolonial queer narrative imposed by the Western ambassadors. In other words, deploying the aforementioned frameworks, I challenge two sets of binaries that are associated with the colonial discourse of global queer subjectivity: (1) Queer Heaven

West/Queer Hell Korea framework and (2) the Oppressor Western Nations/the Oppressed

Korean Organizers framework. By challenging the former set of dichotomies, this thesis problematizes the linear notion of progressive modernity and the universalization of the

Western development of queer subjectivity. At the same time, it also foregrounds the organizers’ agency by questioning the latter binary discourse that assumes the SQCF organizers as victims of the Western neocolonial imposition. In doing so, I emphasize the organizers’ agency and the process of their navigation through institutional and public antagonism against the festival and queer bodies. Instead of rendering them as helpless victims who suffer from the backwardness and the tradition of premodern values, I explore the ways in which the organizers contest and resist cisheteropatriarchy, neocolonialism, and the injustice towards queer bodies. My critical reading against the 15

victimization of South Korean queer bodies is not to deny the harsh circumstances to which South Korean queer bodies are subjected. What I problematize here is not the fact that South Korean queer bodies are exposed to institutional and social scrutiny, surveillance and violence. I am concerned with the notion that the SQCF organizers and the South Korean queer bodies have embodied the neocolonial queer narrative.

I use queer throughout the thesis to broadly indicate subjects, identities, and practices that involve the politics of non-normative sexual and gendered “Others” in the specific context of South Korea. Although queer here shares the same signifier with the term “queer” of the U.S., I argue that queer, or Kwi-eo in Korean, deserves a nuanced contextualization and critical theorization that distinguishes itself from the queer discourse in the U.S. In contemporary South Korean queer activism, the term queer has been taken up by activists as an umbrella term to refer to non-normative gendered and sexualized embodiments and practices, along with LGBT identities and the local term sexual minority, or Seongsosooja, to mobilize subjects who embody non-normative gender and sexual practices and identities in South Korea. For example, the term queer appeared in the name of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival (formerly the Korea Queer

Culture Festival in English) from its first celebration in the year 2000. Holding onto the term’s political commitment of radicalism challenging the gender binary and heteronormativity, activists strategically have used queer to evoke identity and visibility politics through the festival’s publicity.

In order to situate South Korean queerness, I borrow Minwoo Jung’s exploration of postcolonial queerness. Questioning whether a postcolonial subject can be “queer,”

Jung critically analyzes the book Who Would Be Afraid of Sexual Politics (1996), written 16

by Dong-jin Seo, a South Korean gay activist-scholar. Jung argues that Seo attempts to narrow the temporal gap of the queer times between the U.S. and South Korea by projecting the “contemporariness” of the two national spaces in his book. In other words, after witnessing the rise of queer subjectivity and the discourse in the U.S., Seo outwardly expects Korean queer subjecthood to be realized and formed as well.

According to Seo, the rise of South Korean queer subjecthood is a matter of time to be materialized because the U.S. and South Korea share the contemporariness. Jung diagnoses his attempt to conceptualize Korean queer subjectivity the 1990s as a failure.

Jung argues that Seo hoped to theorize a queerness in South Korea that has never happened and that did not arrive. In other words, Seo assumes that queerness in South

Korea will inevitably take place on the linear progression of temporality. This contemporariness is predicated upon a normative, singular, and linear time that normalizes the western history and enforces the developmentalist approach.

Although Jung deems Seo’s theorization as a failure, he does not dismiss Seo’s aspiration for the birth of South Korean queer subjecthood. Instead of discarding Seo’s theorization as a void attempt, Jung identifies and theorizes postcolonial queerness from this imagined temporal gap between the Western colonial time of progressiveness and the postcolonial time of backwardness. Jung looks at the affect of sadness and grief that comes from the inevitable temporal difference due to the time lag on the linear Western modernity. The gap between the Western genealogy of queerness and South Korean

“native” material presence of the deviant gendered/sexual lives creates the imagined loss that never existed. Jung argues that this melancholic lack of, and the desire for, the

“native” discourse of modern and queer subjecthood constitutes queerness of postcolonial 17

subjects. In this sense, Jung sees Seo’s failure as one of the spaces where postcolonial

South Korean queerness materializing itself. Aligning himself with Gayatri Gopinath,

Jack Halberstam, David Eng, and Martin Manalansan, Jung reiterates their acknowledgment of “unequal queer knowledge in global queer studies and the possible dangers of coloniality” as “a form of knowledge production” (88). Arguing for the multiplicity of queer language and queer times, Jung maintains that the postcolonial melancholia comes from the inevitable fissure, the liminality of the impossible postcolonial temporal gap as a starting point of queer theory of postcolonial subjects.

Jung’s analysis is important because he does not stop at the impossibility of postcolonial queer subjects. He rather calls for embracing this liminality as a possible space for postcolonial queerness. In other words, Jung provides the possibility of queerness in South Korean postcolonial subjectivity alongside the global queer politics that do not share the same history and temporality. Jung’s postcolonial analysis enables us to historicize South Korean queerness to be in conversation with global queer politics without relegating it to be a hegemonic mimicry of the colonial imposition of western queer thoughts. Jung’s South Korean postcolonial queerness allows us to imagine an alternative South Korean queer radicalism within this melancholic postcolonial temporality.

Based on Jung’s framework of postcolonial queerness, the SQCF organizers’ deployment of the terms queer as a subject marker is a subversive strategy to realize

South Korean queer citizenship. Despite being the same signifier, the term queer in the

South Korean context must be understood as a distinctive term from, for example, queer in the U.S. context. As Jung demonstrates, imagining South Korean queerness on the 18

singular temporal line with that of the West reduces the complexity of postcolonial queerness. Homogenizing queerness around the world presupposes the universality of modern queer bodies. In this sense, critiquing the South Korean deployment of the term queer as an identity politics that falls short on radicalism and subversiveness not only erases the historical and political context of South Korean queer bodies but defines South

Korean queer history as backward narrative that needs to catch up with the West.

Methodology

As I mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, this project started with my own visceral reaction to the ambassadors’ presence in the festival as a mere co-optation of the neocolonial queer narrative. What challenged my preconceived assumptions was my personal involvement with South Korean queer activists and their movements. During my time before graduate school, I was an active member of the queer activist organization

Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea, or Haengseongin, from the autumn of 2015 to the summer of 2017. By attending the SQCF every year and by participating in numerous organizing and solidarity works done through Hangeseongin in those two years, I witnessed the complexity and messiness of South Korean queer organizing and movements. It was the South Korean queer activists who allowed me to question a set of assumptions about colonialism and queerness with which I was entering the space of

South Korean queer activism.

It was in those moments that I became aware of my positionality as a US- educated diasporic Korean who had limited exposure to South Korean queer activism and 19

who possessed activist visions and theories based on U.S. social movements. Mohanty emphasizes that the colonial gaze by the Western scholarship applies not only to feminists who are “culturally or geographically from the West,” but also to “Third World women in the West or Third World women in the Third World writing on [Third World] issues and publishing in the West” (21). Mohanty reminds me that a colonial discourse can happen not on the basis of the embodiment of race and ethnicity of researchers but on the basis of the methodology the researchers decide to use. My personal engagement with

South Korean queer activism and postcolonial feminism led me to reflect on my own positionality as a transnational activist academic. Therefore, I aspire not only to think about the festival and the organizers as the subjects of this research but also to think with them about the strategies for South Korean queer citizenship. In so doing, I attempt to envision the SQCF organizers’ global solidarity while remaining critical of the West’s neocolonial queer narrative.

My feminist commitment to think with the activists does not mean that the SQCF organizers and South Korean queer activisms are without flaws. Instead, like any other movements in the world, the SQCF as well as the larger South Korean queer movement is messy and complex in its own historical, political, cultural, and social contexts. What I attempt to convey here through this project is not to glorify the movements nor to speak for the activists. Rather, my intention is to highlight the organizers’ agency within this complexity and contribute to the existing body of literature that challenges often too- simplified discourses around queerness, globalization, and colonialism. My critical analysis of the SQCF complicates such a simplified framing that evaluates the festival as

either radical or co-opted. The organizers’ constant negotiations with multiple political actors better capture the political reality of the festival.

In this thesis, I actively employ the recollections of my activist work as my research methods. Autoethnography is a methodological framework that celebrates the importance of a researcher’s personal engagement and the incorporation of their own experience into the project. Challenging the orthodox methodological tradition, it shares the feminist disruption of the mythical objectivity of a researcher. In this sense, I understand autoethnography as a feminist and queer methodological apparatus that helps situate my critical intervention (Jones and Adam 197-9; Wall 147-8). I consider my personal engagement in the South Korean queer activism during the time of the SQCF

2015 as an important site of knowledge production. My conversations with the activists, the street rallies, and the community events shaped the questions I am now asking. I embrace the knowledge-making from my experience as a vantage point of feminist epistemology.

In addition to postcolonial feminist thoughts and autoethnography, this project draws on cultural analysis. I primarily analyze the festival’s official website’s self- presentation of its history, its official press releases, and the “notice” bulletin board. I contextualize the analysis through a discourse reading of online newspapers that highlight political tension and relationship among anti-gay conservative Christian groups, the U.S. imperial presence, and the SQCF. I also do close readings of the structure of the festival as well as the list of its participants to situate different participating actors, which contextualizes the weight of those actors such as the ambassadors as well as the politicians and activists from other Asian nations in the larger scheme of the festival. 21

The Seoul Queer Culture Festival 2015

Starting from the year 2000 with only 50 participants, the Seoul Queer Culture

Festival has grown into a public cultural phenomenon where people celebrate the queer culture in South Korea. Although the festival has attracted more participants and attendees every year since its first celebration, 2014 was the first year when the SQCF became the center of national public attention. This year marked the first time the anti- gay conservative right-wing Christian demonstrators blocked the Queer Parade, which is the main event of the festival. The protestors blocked the parade march by sitting and laying down on the road in front of the march as they would pray and sing hymns. The parade was delayed for four hours but it ended peacefully. This conflict between the festival and the anti-gay demonstrators became a catalyst that attracted unprecedented media attention. While it was not the first time the festival organizers and queer activists had conflicts with anti-gay demonstrators, the 2014 SQCF marked the first time the conflict was materialized in the form of physical opposition in the space of bustling

Seoul.

After the clash during the summer, queer activists held a historic sit-in in the

Seoul City Hall for six days in December of the same year. The city mayor Park Won- soon disavowed the Seoul Citizen Human Rights Charter due to the pressure of the anti- gay Christian groups. Although the charter was created by 190 citizens through a democratic process, the charter was discarded on the basis that it prohibits discriminations based on gender identity and sexual orientation and protects sexual minorities. Park, the former human rights attorney and the organizer of the charter in the 22

first place, was also accused for stating that “I do not support homosexuality” at a meeting with the Council of Presbyterian Churches in Korea. The activists staged the sit- in in protest against the city government of Seoul and Mayor Park. The sit-in ended in six days with Park’s lukewarm apology, but the protest marked a historical moment of the

South Korean queer activism and the power of solidarity. The activists called the protest

“Rainbow Sit-in,” or Mujigae nongseong (Shin-Yoon; Jin).

When the six-day sit-in took place, I was serving my mandatory military conscription as an auxiliary police officer in Seoul. I received the news in my station through an online news article about the sit-in that popped up in one of the most-used

South Korean search portals. It was my first time reading a news article about South

Korean LGBTQ activism without purposefully looking for one. I remember the mixed feelings of excitement and melancholia welling up. I was enthralled for the publicity of queer resistance. At the same time, I was upset that I could not join them because I was serving as auxiliary police, who are usually the ones that would subdue such a protest.

Military conscripts do not have the freedom to leave the parameter of their barracks without proper permission. I wanted to go to the sit-in right away to join the historic moment of South Korean queer resistance. However, I did not have any legitimate reason to leave. A long time after my military conscription was over, one of the people who had participated in the sit-in later told me that one of the auxiliary police servicemen at the sit-in sneaked out to give them some coffee in solidarity, saying that he is also “one of them.” Although I could not physically join the protest, the fact that someone else from the force furtively expressed his solidarity gave me an exciting sensation. Sharing a cup

of coffee at the protest site, an act of care and solidarity, was a moment of subversion and resistance against the hegemonic oppression.

As the anti-gay demonstrators’ disruption of the Queer Parade and the sit-in protest at the Seoul City Hall brought much attention from the public in 2014, the next year marked a drastic change of public visibility of queer activism. The scope of the 2015 festival expanded, and the number of participants and attendees grew exponentially. With its growth, the festival’s political dynamics have been solidified to involve not only queer activists and attendees but also four other political actors: 1) the anti-gay right-wing

Christian demonstrators, 2) the Seoul city government, 3) a few global corporations such as Google and Lush, and 4) the embassies (Figure 1). Starting from 2015, the anti-gay demonstrators surrounded Seoul Square on the day of the festival and performed various activities such as preaching with homophobic speeches, praying for them to “return,” and performing percussions. They would obtain a permit for demonstration from the Seoul city government to protest right next to the festival. I witnessed their extravagant and over-the-top homophobic performance as a demonstration in person. The anti-gay demonstrators danced to Korean traditional music in traditional Korean clothes hanbok.

Interestingly, they also staged a ballet performance during their protest. The festival attendees later mocked the demonstrators for dancing to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’ music, who is known for his homosexuality. Although the demonstrators’ presence posed

a physical and material threat to the festival, the festival organizers and the festival attendees also subverted such a threat by sarcastically deriding the demonstrators and enjoying the festival. The anti-gay demonstrators’ performances also received much media attention in conjunction with the SQCF. These groups also engaged with the festival by involving the city government to prevent the festival from taking place1

(Kim).

Figure 1. The Actors of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival

1 There have been analyses about these groups by South Korean queer activists and scholars (C. Han; Jeong). 25

The 16th Seoul Queer Culture Festival took place between June 9 and June 28,

2015. The festival was structured into five different aspects: the opening ceremony, the main festival day, the official after-party Private Beach, the Korea Queer Film Festival, and other political and cultural events during the festival (Figure 2). The opening ceremony was implemented at the festival for the first time in 2015. The ceremony was supposed to be the “eve” event on the night before the main festival day, but it was held on June 9 while the main festival was on June 28 because of the legal conflicts with the

Seoul city government, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, and the conservative

Christian groups. For the same reason, the main party was held on June 13 when it was supposed to be held after the parade (Figure 3).

Stall Area

Figure 2. The Structure of the SQCF 2015

Figure 3. The Dates of the SQCF 2015

The main festival day consisted of three different parts: the festival stall area, main performances, and the Queer Parade (Figure 2). The stall area was set up throughout

Seoul Square from the morning until the end of the parade. More than a hundred LGBTQ activist groups, university queer organizations, feminist groups, religious groups, global companies, and some Western embassies set up their tents. They primarily introduced themselves to visitors, explained their on-going projects, and sold their goods and booklets to raise funds.

When I visited the main festival in 2015, people at the Western embassies’ stalls distributed the immigration pamphlets and advertisement flyers for their study abroad programs. Although I am critical of the Western embassies’ promotion of migration and study abroad, deeply connected to the neoliberal economic strategy, I also found that the

presence of the embassies’ festival stalls was minimal. Seoul Square was filled with numerous organizations’ stations and their activities. The presence of embassies or corporations was hardly noticeable in the larger scheme of the events. Furthermore, the organizers located the embassies’ stalls at the opposite corner of Seoul Square from the entrance point. Figure 4 shows the map of Seoul Square and the location of the participating groups’ stalls (@sqcforg). The point marked 89 is near the entrance to the festival. The rainbow-colored box is the main stage of the festival. Each number represents a festival stall. The embassies and international corporations were located at the spots between 41 and 50. Attendees have to go through many activist and university stalls before visiting these stalls. I interpret the embassies location as one of the markers that show the organizers’ deliberate decision. Although the SQCF organizers deploy the embassies, they still find ways to represent their commitment through prioritizing the community organizing and activism in the festival. No South Korean corporations have participated in the festival. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea did not participate in the SQCF until 2017, as the first national institution to take part in the festival.

The main stage performances always start with a Pungmul performance (Korean traditional music) by a queer Pungmul group every year. Opening the festival main performances with Pungmul is also significant because of the historical and political imagination of homosexuality and queerness as “un-Korean.” In 2015, the anti-gay

Figure 4. The Map of the SQCF Stalls

Image from the SQCF Tweeter Account (@sqcforg)

demonstrators staged various performances that invoke South Korean national identity and patriotism. For example, as mentioned earlier, the women performers in traditional

Korean clothing hanbok performed traditional Korean percussions. During their worship services in the demonstration, they would scream out Daehanminguk,2 literally meaning the Republic of Korea in Korean, to show their dedication for their concerns for the nation-state. Their catchphrases often read “homosexuality ruins the country built with

2 This phrase was used throughout South Korea during the FIFA World Cup in 2002. South Korea reached the semi-final for the first time in the World Cup history. The success was a national sensation and people cheered the phrase everywhere during the time. 29

sweat and blood” or “Pro-North Gay.” The “Pro-North,” or jongbuk in Korean, refers to the alleged followers of North Korea and its political ideology. The South Korean right- wing nationalists have used the term to associate the leftist movements to North Korea under the Cold War logic and to frame it as anti-South Korean. Although the Pungmul performance has always been the first performance throughout the history of the SQCF, even before the overt disruption by the anti-gay demonstrators, it demonstrated the festival organizers’ awareness of the popular belief that homosexuality and queerness is a

Western import. Pungmul performance represents the Korean-ness in the national imagination. South Korean queer subjects’ Pungmul performance overtly claims for the national belonging of queer bodies. In this sense, the Pungmul performance challenge the anti-gay demonstrators’ accusation of queer subjects and politics as “un-Korean” (Kim).

Starting with the Korean traditional performance, the main performance events also include drag shows, lesbian and gay choirs, queer dance group performances and more. After the performances end, the Queer Parade takes place in the early evening.

Like the pride events in other parts of the world, the parade is the highlight of the entire festival as the participants march on the main streets in the heart of Seoul. The parade of

2015 covered 2.6 km (about 1.6 miles), the longest distance in its history up to that point, departing from the Seoul Square and returning to the starting point. The estimated number of attendees of the festival was 30,000 people, which doubled from the previous year.

In this elaborate span of the festival, more than a dozen embassies participated in the 2015 festival in the opening ceremony and the festival stall area. During the opening ceremony, the ambassadors delivered endorsement speeches of the festival. The number 30

of participating embassies contrasted to the previous year’s three embassies (“The 15th

Queer Culture Festival”). The previous year of 2014 marked the festival’s first embassy presence. The three participants were the representatives from Germany, France, and the

United States. In 2015, however, seventeen ambassadors went on to the main stage and showed their government’s support of the festival in the opening ceremony3 (“The 16th

Korea Queer Culture Festival 2015”). On the day of the main events, thirteen embassies set up their festival stalls (“The 16th ‘Queer Culture Festival’ Street March”). The ambassadors of Germany, France, Finland, and the U.S. visited the main festival on the day of the main events in person. However, the embassies participation in the festival was limited to the opening ceremony and their stalls. They did not participate in other cultural and political events hosted by the organizers nor did they march in the Queer Parade.

The Triangulation of the Queers, the Nation, and the West

The SQCF’s official website promoted the embassies’ participation in the festival.

Throughout the festival, the website’s press releases briefly, but repeatedly, mentioned the global support from the foreign government representatives. In particular, among many embassies that participated in the festival, the press release articles emphasized the support by the U.S. embassy.

3 The seventeen embassies are: the EU Representative Department, Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Spain, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. 31

The festival organizers’ celebration of the Western embassies’ participation and the emphasis on the U.S. representative in their press release articles seem to show that the organizers internalize the neocolonial queer narrative delivered by the Western ambassadors. However, I argue that the festival organizers’ celebration of the Western embassies’ endorsements and their emphasis on the U.S. embassy are the organizers’ strategies for the greater public visibility and media attention. In this section of the thesis,

I demonstrate the ways in which the festival organizers subvert the Western embassies’ endorsement rather than be simply co-opted by the neocolonial queer narrative. I delineate how the organizers are utilizing their liminal position vis á vis the South Korean nation-state and the Western embassies.

First, the Western embassies’ endorsement of the festival is a tool for the organizers to pressure the national and the city governments to act on its institutional protection of queer bodies in South Korea. The organizers’ intentional deployment of the embassies and the disinterest in the neocolonial queer narrative of the Western embassies are well-documented in Han’s article. One of the festival organizers, Ye-rim, shares that the organizers “need [embassies’] participation because we can appeal to city government officials” (qtd in W. Han 42). According to her, the strategy is instrumental for the organizers to pressure the government bodies to properly participate in “the global age”

(qtd in W. Han 42). Ye-rim makes clear that the incorporation of the embassies is a strategic deployment and she hopes that it will not be necessary in the future.

Ye-rim’s point on “the global age” shows that the organizers’ awareness of the government officials’ political aspiration to participate in the neoliberal globalization.

South Korea has historically equated its economic growth and development to the 32

political modernization under the framework of global capitalism since the 1960s (Moon

2). The modernization effort of South Korean nation-state only changed its appearance to globalization in the 1990s and the 2000s. Globalization, along with neoliberalization, has served a synonym for the country’s modernization projects to assert its economic, military, and political power in the international relations (Shin 204-9). Ye-rim’s comment, therefore, points to the South Korean government official’s quandary between the Western neocolonial narrative and the South Korean queer activists’ demands for proper queer citizenship. In other words, the South Korean government officials are pressured at least to consider the voice of the SQCF organizers and queer activists in order to negotiate the global modernity. As the incorporation of queer bodies translates to a nation-state’s level of modernity, the SQCF organizers subvert the neocolonial queer narrative to assert South Korean queer citizenship. In Han’s interview, Ye-rim says to the

Western embassies, “take care of LGBTQ people in your country first” (qtd in W. Han

46). Her sarcastic remark illustrates the organizers’ sharp awareness of the Western embassies’ hegemonic and paternalistic attitude in the SQCF.

We can locate the SQCF organizers’ strategic deployment of embassies in another political triangulation between the U.S. ambassador Mark Lippert and the anti-gay demonstrators. As I have mentioned throughout this thesis, the anti-gay demonstrators staged elaborate homophobic sermons and performances at the site of the festival.

SQCF Organizers

South The West Korean Aspire (Embassies) Government Officials

Figure 5. The Triangulation of South Korea and the West

Although they received much media attention due to the conflict with the festival, the demonstrators were also known for their extreme advocacy for the South Korea-U.S. military alliance because of their elaborate public performance for the ambassador. Three months before the festival, in March 2015, Korean nationalist Ki-Jong Kim attacked

Lippert with a knife at a breakfast meeting with the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation. Kim hurt Lippert’s face, arm, and hand in protest of the joint military drills between South Korea and the U.S. While the attack was not life-threatening, the ambassador had to go through surgery with 80 stitches on his face (Lee and Bae).

After the incident, the conservative right-wing Christian groups, the same constituents of the anti-gay demonstrators, held a public joint worship services to pray for

Lippert’s recovery and showcased over-the-top performances to wish the betterment of

his health. During the performances, they called for a stronger militaristic alliance between South Korea and the U.S. and severely condemned the attacker as pro-North

Korea. They received much media attention for their extreme reaction and faced criticism for their submissive attitude toward the United States (Koo).

Given the public perception of the anti-gay demonstrators, the ambassador

Lippert’s endorsement of the festival and his personal visit to the festival was strategically useful for the organizers to shame the anti-gay demonstrators. The SQCF took place when the collective memory in the South Korean public was still vivid. The

U.S. embassy and Lippert’s support for the festival put the anti-gay demonstrator groups in an unpleasant position because of their publicized support for Lippert. Despite their

SQCF Organizers

U.S. lionize Anti-gay Embassy Demonstrators

Figure 6. The Triangulation of the Anti-gay Demonstrators and the U.S.

support for the U.S. military presence and extravagant prayers for Lippert’s health, the ambassador ended up on the other side of the battle! The anti-gay groups had been systematically targeting the sexual Others as pro-North Korea, which translates into an anti-U.S. stance. The organizers were able to shame the demonstrators by emphasizing the U.S.’s support for the “pro-North” gays. The organizers subverted the neocolonial queer narrative to publicly ridiculed the organized hate groups that were specifically targeting queer bodies.

In addition, on June 26, when the SQCF was taking place, the Defense of

Marriage Act (DOMA) was overruled by the supreme court in the United States, technically legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States. The supreme court decision legalized the American service members deployed in South Korea to legally marry their same-sex partners as well. For the organizers, the queer inclusive politics of the United States government, albeit homonational, was a great tool to use against the anti-gay demonstrators who idolize the U.S. The festival organizers employed the U.S. homonational projects to publicly embarrass the demonstrators while the U.S. embassy used the SQCF as a platform to consolidate the neocolonial queer narrative and present itself as a progressive and modern nation-state (Koo; Shin-Yoon). The SQCF 2015 was another space where these three different political entities with different agendas meet in a power triangle.

These triangular mappings show the position the SQCF organizers occupy between South Korean state violence against queer bodies and the Western embassies’ neocolonial queer narrative. The SQCF organizers make decisions while navigating this complex power dynamics in order to secure a safe space for sexual Others. Taking 36

advantage of the government officials’ aspiration for globalization and the anti-gay demonstrators’ strong affinity to the U.S. militarism, the organizers deploy the Western embassies’ support of the festival to work in their favor. Rather than a mere co-optation of the neocolonial queer narrative, the organizers’ emphasis on the embassies, therefore, must be considered, at least in part, as a demonstration of agency that allowed the festival organizers to achieve public visibility and safety of queer bodies.

The Transnational Solidarity and Globality

I have demonstrated how the incorporation of the embassies in the SQCF is one of the organizers’ intentional strategy to fight the material violence present at the festival.

However, the Western embassies were not the only global participants at the festival. In the SQCF 2015, many queer activists, progressive politicians, and pride event organizers from various Asian nations also participated in the festival in solidarity with the South

Korean queer activism. In this section, I highlight the participation of these Asian queer activists and reimagine the organizers’ understanding of the global participants of the festival. More specifically, I analyze the organizers’ invitation of the other Asian participants as their commitment to global solidarity of queer activism. I argue that their conscious incorporation of the Asian activists demonstrates a keen awareness of global power dynamics, an awareness that challenges the binary understanding of Korea and the

West in queer organizing.

As mentioned earlier, I conceptualize globality as the organizers’ interactions with the various global participants in the festival beyond the binarism of South 37

Korea/West. This framework decenters the binary perspective of the world. Instead of over-emphasizing the relationship between the SQCF organizers and the Western embassies, globality shifts the perspective to look at the world from the perspectives of the organizers. It expands the scope of the festival by highlighting the organizers’ multiple engagements with various global actors. This shift of framework is important because the overdetermination of the aforementioned binary erases the holistic picture of the festival and renders the SQCF organizers as the victims of the neocolonial queer narratives. I challenge this overdetermination by acknowledging the queer Asian solidarity and by analyzing the different ways in which the organizers incorporate the

Asian queer activists in the festival. In so doing, I highlight the organizers’ agency that accentuates the importance of global queer solidarity while simultaneously defying the co-optation by the colonial powers in the space of queer subversion.

Throughout the extensive span of the festival, the spaces that the Western embassies and the Asian activists occupy show difference. As analyzed in the previous section, the embassies primarily participated in the parts of the festival that are publicly visible. The ambassadors delivered their speeches of endorsement of the festival in the opening ceremony, which was broadcast live on YouTube. Some of the embassies set up their stalls on Seoul Square to advertise their immigration and study abroad programs.

Their involvement in the festival was limited to the publicity and advertising of their nation-states to their future “consumer.”

In contrast, the activists who participated in these events were not representatives from the respective Asian governments. The Asian activists participated mainly in the

political events that took place before the main day. As seen in Figure 7, there were six political and cultural events held by the SQCF organizing committee, which took place sporadically throughout May and June. The SQCF organizers coordinated the two events with the Asian activists during this time, namely the “2015 Asia LGBT Conference:

Double Exposure: to Changes and Hates” and “Unions Marching for Equality:

International Symposium on Same-sex Partnership Rights,” in May and June respectively

(“History: 2015”). “Double Exposure” provided a space for four LGBT pride event organizers from the Philippines, China, Singapore, and South Korea to present their movements’ accomplishments and struggles and discuss resistance strategies against

Figure 7. The Events of the SQCF 2015

oppressive political circumstances (Narang, “Asia’s LGBT Movements”). In “Unions

Marching for Equality,” the organizers invited scholars, politicians, lawyers, and activists from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to the symposium to discuss the current LGBTQ politics and the legality of same-sex partnership in respective countries (Narang, “Asia’s

Same-sex Marriage”). While the former conference was directly organized and held by the SQCF organizers, the latter symposium was sponsored by the SQCF.

These events took place in more intimate settings at a safer space where the various political actors for LGBTQ social justice in Asian nations got together and discussed their political strategies. For example, I was taken aback by the location of the public event when I attended “Unions Marching for Equality.” It was held at a conference room in the National Assembly Hall. I remember feeling out of place because I had not imagined an event for queer politics to be held in a government building, let alone the

National Assembly. I also found it strange that the location was also relatively inaccessible although the event was open to the public. The Korean National Assembly is located in Yeouido, an island in the midst of Han river that penetrates modern Seoul. The small island is a government-administrative center of the South Korean nation-state. Due to this characteristic, Yeouido is not a popular destination for meetings outside of the government and business sectors. However, because the government building secured relative privacy and safety, this symposium was protected from possible protests and conflicts. Despite the somewhat inaccessible location, many people showed up to the public event.

The symposium also showcased the SQCF organizers’ investment and commitment to make the conversation of transnational solidarity happen. At the symposium, legal scholar Taniguchi Hiroyuki and Setagaya district councilwoman of

Tokyo Kamikawa Aya participated from Japan. From Taiwan, activist-lawyer Victoria

Hsu and activist Chen Chih-chi of Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights

(TAPCPR) joined the symposium. The Taiwanese Green Party politician Liang Yi-chih also contributed to the conversations. As an attendee, it was an exciting moment for me to be in the same space with people who are fighting a similar fight in different countries of Asia. The arrangement to bring these people from other countries must have required much time, funding, and effort. I felt such emotion of gratitude when I realized that there were simultaneous interpreters for three different languages (Japanese, Mandarin

Chinese, and English). Bringing these people together and organizing such events show the SQCF organizers’ commitment to the solidarity with global queer activism. There was no such intimacy between the organizers and activists when the Western ambassadors participated in the festival. The contrast between the events involving the

Western embassies and the Asian activists was stark.

The Tokyo Rainbow Pride’s active participation in the Queer Parade of the festival was another space of intimate engagement with Asian queer activists. In addition to Shanghai Pride, PinkDot Singapore, and Metro Manila Pride, the 2015 SQCF organizers listed The Tokyo Rainbow Pride (TRP) as one of their official “Friendship

Sponsors” of the festival (“History: 2015”). Whereas the other three Asian pride events listed their names on the sponsorship from participating in the “Double Exposure”

conference, the TRP did so by walking together with the SQCF participants. As Figure 2 shows, the Queer Parade is one activity out of many in the festival. The Queer Parade commemorates the Stonewall uprising that has led to the modern development of queer activism in the United States and other pride events throughout the world. The Queer

Parade is the main highlight of the celebration that shares the value of pride and visibility of queer bodies with other pride events attendees in the world. Throughout the four years of my experience with the festival, the TRP activists always participated in the parade and expressed their solidarity on the main performance stage before the parade starts.

The TRP’s presence in the march is significant because it shows that the SQCF organizers value transnational solidarity with queer activists and organizers from the neighboring country. The march involves approximately ten parade floats that are sporadically lined up. Each float blasts music so that the followers listen, cheer, and/or dance to as they proceed. The parade attendees choose one of the floats to follow. Every year, the SQCF organizers go through the decision-making process to assign the floats to organizations considering the importance of representation. For example, in 2015, the floats were assigned to Jogakbo (Korean Transgender Rights Organization), Chingusai

(Korean Gay Men’s Human Rights Group), Dance Duo 28, Men’s Dance Team SPIKE, and the Solidarity for the LGBT Human Rights of Korea/Haengseongin (“History:

2015”). Along with the South Korean queer cultural groups and activist organizations, the

TRP also took a float to participate in the Queer Parade.

I emphasize the importance of the TRP’s parade participation with its own float because of the peculiarity of the Queer Parade. Unlike many pride events in the U.S., the

SQCF Queer Parade march does not require any registration for attendees. Instead of various LGBTQ organizations and groups marching in assigned spots, anyone can take part in the march anywhere as long as they join it at the starting point. Any festival attendee can follow any float of their choice and they can also change floats to follow during the parade. In this configuration, the organizers have to consider the politics of representation in selecting float participants. The floats represent the values of the festival and they show the organizers’ intentional communication of their political commitment with the public. For example, the lineup of the transgender organization Jogakbo, which was a nascent group in 2015, as the first float of the march translates the festival organization’s commitment for trans visibility. In more recent parades, I witnessed the parade floats of various queer feminist organizations in the wake of the public debate over misogyny within the gay community as well as the surge of anti-gay and anti-trans feminist movements in South Korea. As such, the TRP’s continuous participation of the parade communicates the political and cultural importance to the attendees and the public. The organizers’ commitment to include the TRP in the parade every year shows that they put a significant value on their solidarity with the TRP. In other words, the

TRP’s participation, unlike the Western embassies, represents the SQCF organizers’ emphasis on transnational solidary in Asia4.

4 At the same time, I acknowledge that the trans-Asian solidarity can be complex and complicated due to the history and the legacy of Japanese imperialism throughout Asia. I do not intend to simplify the festival’s globality as another binary of East vs. West without contextualizing the political dynamics within Asia. For example, the organizers’ emphasis on Japanese pride events is interesting, considering the history of Japanese gay/queer tourism in Korean gay bars is worth investigating. Furthermore, the South Korean government and corporations’ neoliberal hegemony in Southeast Asia also should be investigated. 43

As I have pointed out, the festival organizers’ transnational solidarity work with other Asian pride events have continued even after 2015. For example, the TRP has continuously participated in the Queer Parade since 2015. The SQCF also regularly participate in the Tokyo, Osaka, and Taiwan pride events to support their struggle

(WritingGay). The intimacy between the SQCF organizers and the other Asian pride event organizers demonstrates their different roles from those of the Western embassies in the festival. The different engagement with various global participants in the festival shows the SQCF organizers’ awareness of their political valences. The western embassies were deployed to be the “front cover” of the festival, drawing much attention and publicity, such as the opening ceremony and the stall setup. The intimate solidarity networking and active engagement with other Asian queer activists also show how the organizers project the global solidarity not as a unilateral process but as a multilateral engagement.5

5 In addition to the Asian activists’ participation, Pauline Park, a Korean-American trans adoptee activist was also invited to the festival’s main stage to deliver a solidarity speech. She joined South Korean queer activists and the SQCF representative to publicly protest against the Turkish government’s violent repression against the Istanbul pride shortly after the SQCF 2015. She is a New York-based activist for Palestine as well. The invitation of Park needs to be further explored and included in this project in the future. 44

Conclusion

In this thesis, I investigated the ways in which the Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizers subverted the neocolonial queer narrative as a means to realize South Korean queer citizenship. Approaching the festival and the organizers through the postcolonial feminist and queer frameworks, I analyzed the political contexts behind the Western ambassadors’ support of the SQCF. I examined the uncovered spaces within the festival where Asian queer activists from multiple countries gather and exchange their political strategies and tools. In doing so, I critically engaged with the neocolonial queer narrative that poses the West as the pioneer of queer politics and the “rest” of the world as the premodern follower of the West. Challenging such a framework that also casts the SQCF organizers as the victims of Western queer liberalism, I foregrounded the agency of the organizers and their aspiration for South Korean queer citizenship through public visibility and the appreciation of queer culture in the festival. Ultimately, this thesis was my feminist attempt to restore the organizers’ agency and to emphasize their navigation of state violence against the sexual Others and the neocolonial queer narrative. I highlighted the constant negotiations the organizers face and delineated the complexity of political power dynamics in the festival.

My reading of the festival organizers does not deny the implications of hegemonic imperial powers, especially in the form of neoliberal capitalism. Nor does it argue that such global hegemony is not a problem as long as the activists from South Korea or even from the global South demonstrate their agency. Even though the SQCF demonstrates complicated globality, the organizers’ active incorporation of the Western embassies’

presence still risks their participation in the neocolonial queer narrative. For example, in the SQCF 2016, one of the emcees of the main performance made a cynical joke after listening to the ambassadors’ endorsement speech. The emcee jokingly said, “We [parade participants] should consult the Euro-American embassies to escape ‘Hell Korea’ and emigrate” (qtd in W. Han 45). As soon as I heard this “joke” coming from the main stage,

I felt instant discomfort. The emcee’s comment recognized the neocolonial queer narrative that assumes that Western countries are the ideal places for queer subjects. Such a comment also promotes the false idea that immigration to these countries will solve problems that queer bodies face living in South Korea. At the same time, however, such a moment of “co-optation” should also be contextualized. Although I did not appreciate the comment, I took it with a grain of salt because it was during a time of national dissatisfaction with the administration, unstable economy, and high unemployment rate among other social and political problems. It was common for South Korean people of the younger generation on social media, in and out of the queer community, to share their hope to leave the country for better employment and fair compensation. The mainstream discourse of leaving the country for better opportunities and social treatment was widespread.

While recognizing such moments of the neocolonial narratives, however, I turn our attention to the SQCF organizers’ solidarity works that also subvert them. The festival is the space of complex contradictions due to global politics. I argue here that it is a narrow reading of the festival if we only look at the organizers’ relation to the Western embassies and overdetermine that the festival was co-opted by the neocolonial narrative.

Such an interpretation overshadows the organizers’ different engagement with various political actors surrounding the SQCF. It also erases the organizers’ agency and their constant negotiation of the imagined narratives and political contestation. The emphasis on the ongoing negotiations does not minimize the organizers’ integrity and commitment to queer citizenship and the intersectional subversion. Rather, it raises generative questions that capture the complexity of the festival, such as how they negotiate such powers, what actors are involved in the festival, or what values are prioritized in the organizers’ decision making.

Works Cited

Primary Sources @sqcforg. “It’s tomorrow! >_< Here is the Queer Parade map of the stalls at the 16th Queer Culture Festival 2015! You can see the details if you download the images! 바로 내일이이에요~ >_< 2015 년 제 16 회 퀴어문화축제 퀴어퍼레이드 부스 배치도를 알려드립니다! 이미지 저장~ 하셔서 보시면 더 자세히 보실 수 있어요!” Twitter, 26 June 2015, 9:15 p.m., https://twitter.com/sqcforg/status/614648179183648768. Accessed 2 Apr. 2019. “[2017 Queer Culture Festival Opening Ceremony] Embassies Celebration Address [2017 퀴어문화축제 개막식] 대사관들 축사.” YouTube, uploaded by Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, 24 July 2017, https://youtu.be/nuOw3sYtqbI. Accessed. 2. Apr. 2019.

“History: 2015 16th Queer Culture Festival 2015 년 제 16 회 퀴어문화축제.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, http://sqcf.org/index.php?mid=history&category=169796. Accessed 2 Apr. 2019.

“Introduction.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, http://sqcf.org/intro. Accessed 2 Apr. 2019. “KQCF hosts the Asia Conference on LGBT .” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, 9 Apr. 2015, http://sqcf.org/xe/notice/167085. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018.

“Seoul Plaza Full of Rainbow Pride 무지갯빛 자긍심으로 가득 찬 서울광장.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, June 30 2015, http://sqcf.org/xe/Release/169071. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018. “The 15th Queer Culture Festival Realizes the Meaning of ‘Love Conquers Hate,’ Held at the Largest Scale Ever ‘사랑은 혐오보다 강하다’ 의미 실현한 제 15 회

퀴어문화축제 퍼레이드, 역대 최대 규모로 열려.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제. 2000 KQCF, June 26 2014, http://sqcf.org/xe/Release/158950. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018. “The 16th ‘Queer Culture Festival’ Street March for Sexual Minorities’ Pride is Held in Seoul Plaza 성소수자 자긍심 고취를 위한 ‘제 16 회 퀴어문화축제’ 거리행진, 서울광장에서 개최.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, June 30 2015, http://sqcf.org/xe/Release/169069. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018. “The 16th Korea Queer Culture Festival 2015 Opened amid Celebration from Various Countries.” Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, June 11 2015, http://sqcf.org/xe/Release/168740. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018.

Jin, Myeong-seon 진명선. “Sexual Minority Organizations Occupy Seoul City Hall… ‘Respond, Park Won-soon’ 성소수자 단체들 서울시청 점거…’박원순 응답하라.’” Hankyeorye 한겨례, 6 Dec. 2014, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/667811.html. Accessed 28 Mar. 2019

Kim, Beom-soo 김범수. “Homosexuality ruins the country? 동성애로 나라가 무너진다고?” Hankook Ilbo 한국일보, 30 June 2015, http://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/201506301771182380. Accessed 2. Apr. 2019.

Koo, Kwon-hyo 구권효. “Who are the Christians who Performed the Fan Dance, Ballet, and Nanta for Fast Recovery of the attacked U.S. Ambassador? 피격 미국 대사 쾌유 빌며 부채춤·발레·난타 공연한 기독교인은?” NewsnJoy 뉴스앤조이. NewsnJoy 뉴스앤조이, Mar. 9 2015, http://www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=198628. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018.

Lee, Hye-ri and Jang-hyeon Bae 이혜리 배장현. “Ambassador Lippert, a 11cm-long Pierced Wound on His Right Cheek Resulted in 80 Stitches 리퍼트 대사,

오른뺨에 길이 11 ㎝ 자상… 80 여 바늘 꿰매.” Kyeonghyang Shinmun 경향신문, 5 Mar. 2015, http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?art_id=201503052203445#c sidxeca6cf2f65d827a90711d172f3400c3. Accessed 2. Apr. 2019.

Lee, Jeong-ah 이정아. “The Rainbow at the U.S. embassy? 주한미국대사관에 뜬 무지개?” Hankyeorye 한겨례, 8 July 2018, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/852366.html. Accessed 2 Apr. 2019.

Military Human Rights Center for Korea 군인권센터. “Homophobic Army Chief of Staff GEN Jang Junkyu Should Step Down 육군 내 동성애자 색출을 지시한 장준규 육군참모총장은 사퇴하라.” Military Human Rights Center for Korean Press Release, 13. Apr. 2017. https://www.wikihow.com/Cite-a-Press-Release. Accessed 28. Mar. 2019.

Narang 나랑. “Asia’s LGBT Movements Becoming Visible: Change and Challenge of The Philippines, Singapore, China and Korea 가시화되는 아시아의 LGBT 운동: 필리핀, 싱가포르, 중국, 한국의 변화와 도전.” Ilda 일다. Ilda 일다, June 1 2015, http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7110. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018. ---. “Asia’s Same-sex Marriage, How Far Has it Come: Korea, Japan, and Taiwan’s Movements for Marriage Equality and Family Formation Rights. 아시아의 동성결혼, 어디까지 와 있나: 한국, 일본, 대만 혼인평등과 가족구성 권리운동.” Ilda 일다. Ilda 일다, June 28 2015, http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7142. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018.

Shin-Yoon, Dong-wook 신윤동욱. “Sexual Minorities’ Occupation of Seoul City Hall, The Report of Six Days 성소수자 서울시청 점거, 6 일간의 기록.” Huffington Post Korea 허핑턴포스트 코리아, 23 Dec. 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.kr/2014/12/23/story_n_6370838.html. Accessed 28 Mar. 2019.

---. “Why did the Christians dance Korean fan dance? 그 기독교인들은 왜 하필 부채춤을 추었을까?.” The Hankyoreh 한겨례. The Hankyoreh 한겨례, Mar. 24 2015, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/683706.html. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018.

WritingGay 글쓰는게이. “News on Participation in Asian Prides 아시아 프라이드 참여소식.” Queer Culture Festival Newsletter (Nov. 2016): n.pag. Seoul Queer Culture Festival 서울퀴어문화축제, http://sqcf.org/newsletter/171529. Accessed 2 Apr. 2019.

Secondary Sources

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Print Escobar, Arturo. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

Han, Chae-yoon 한채윤. “Why Korean Christianity Needs Homophobia 한국 기독교는 왜 동성애 혐오를 필요로 하는가.” We Oppose Two-Gender Equality 양성평등에 반대한다. Edited by Hee-jin Jeong 정희진, Seoul: Kyoyangin 교양인, 2016.

Han, Woori. “Proud of Myself as LGBTQ: The Seoul Pride Parade, Homonationalism, and Queer Developmental Citizenship.” Korea Journal 58. 2 (2018):27-57. Jeong, Shiwoo. “Already, But Not Yet: The Construction of a Queer Field in Contemporary South Korea.” MA Thesis. Yonsei University, 2015. Jones, Stacy Holman, and Tony E. Adams. "Autoethnography Is a Queer Method." Queer Methods and Methodologies (2016): 195-214.

Jung, Min-woo 정민우. “Queer Theory, Sad Native Language 퀴어이론, 슬픈 모국어.” Culture & Society 문화와 사회. 13 (2012): 53-100.

Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. 2004. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Moon, Seungsook. Militarized modernity and gendered citizenship in South Korea. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages - Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

Seo, Dong-jin 서동진. Who Would Be Afraid of Sexual Politics 누가 성정치학을 두려워하랴?” Goyang: Munyemadang 문예마당, 1996.

Wall, Sarah. "An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography." International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5.2 (2006): 146-60.