One Year After Hateful Attacks, Incheon Pride Regroups for Celebration of Love
What was meant to be a celebration of love, pride, and identity turned into a violent attack on parade attendees by radical “Christians” in the port city of Incheon, South Korea. The stage was sabotaged, people were beaten up, and many were left traumatised.
It was September 8, 2018, the city’s first pride festival.
I had reported from Seoul Pride only weeks before. I wrote about it, even made a viral video. I came to the conclusion that things were changing for the better for South Korea’s LGBTQ community.
And then Incheon happened.
I went back home that day wondering what on earth I had just witnessed. Everyone in the subway carriage back to Seoul was a damaged soul. I held back my tears. Dozens wept throughout the journey home.
Fast forward to 2019
One year on, and tomorrow, August 31, 2019, the city will host the festival’s second edition. Organisers have said they will do their best to ensure safety. Several embassies in South Korea have vowed to be present at pride festivals across the country — including Incheon — following last year’s violence. As so, diplomats representing seven nations will be present tomorrow.
Police are reportedly going to deploy 3,000 personnel (other reports say 5,000) including riot police, and set up 300 metal barricades to enclose the event in the main venue, Bupyeong Plaza, separating the 500 expected attendees from the estimate 2,500+ homophobic “Christians.”
And these evangelical protesters will be ready: they’ve applied for permission to hold a counter-rally in a neighbouring park. Other hate groups have applied to hold similar rallies around Bupyeong Plaza. Propaganda videos have been created, leaflets distributed, banners hung up across Incheon. Some are even calling for the mobilisation of 10,000 churchgoers.
So how did this anticipated warzone come about? How did it all come to this? To understand Incheon Part 2, we must look back at the harrowing events that unfolded on September 8, 2018, which one activist described to me as a “watershed moment” in Korea’s LGBTQ movement.
One fine day gone ugly
Organisers of the first edition of the Incheon Queer Culture Festival in 2018 faced uncertainty from the outset, when permission to hold the event was refused last minute by the city, which claimed organisers had failed to secure enough security personnel and parking spaces. This was quickly denounced by festival’s organising committee as well as South Korea’s Green Party as a deliberate attempt to discriminate against sexual minorities.
While homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea, it is still very much frowned upon in a country that remains deeply conservative. In recent years, queer parades around South Korea including in Seoul and Daegu have faced severe resistance from conservative groups and evangelical “Christians.”
Despite the event being effectively banned, organisers filed an adjudication against the government of the district in which the event was scheduled to take place, citing the lack of set standards regarding parking and security. They said they would nonetheless go ahead with the event within “legal limits” of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.
The night prior to the festival, protesters had already occupied the festival grounds, partially sabotaging the stage. By midday on September 8, it was obvious the festival was in trouble: half the booths were abandoned, and entry into the festival held in the North Plaza near Dongincheon Station was restricted by police. Several attendees had their posters and placards savagely ripped up by the protesters.
“It explained what the word ‘asexual’ meant in both Korean and English,” one attendee told me. “The protesters grabbed it from my hands, and tore it,” they said.
Soon enough, the phrases “Stop the hate” and “Incheon Queer Parade” became top trending keywords on Twitter.
Police stepped in and formed a human barricade to separate the festival attendees from the protesters. It was a matter of hundreds versus thousands.
Inside the enclosed space, many seemed unperturbed, dancing and singing while raising large flags, some rainbows, others of LGBTQ or ally organisations.
I had only planned on attending for a few hours. Little did I know I’d be trapped inside for over seven hours without access to water, food, or toilets.
Outside the police perimeter, demonstrators held up banners, which read “Oppose the queer parade,” “Homosexuality is a sin,” and “There is no gay gene.” Many simply held up a card calling to “Oppose the anti-discrimination bill.”
South Korea currently has no law that bans against discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, religion, nationality, political views etc.
Parents of LGBTQ children received a massive cheer, waiting to lead the march forward, scheduled for 4 PM. But the march never took place.
With police surrounded and outnumbered by many more “Christian” protesters, they were unable to create a safe passage for the street march to take place.
The first Incheon pride parade was effectively cancelled.
The protesters become more aggressive, pushing and hitting against the police lines that were several men thick.
The scene resembled a riot.
I witnessed one attendee who found himself on the protester side who was beaten and kicked to the ground for waving a rainbow flag. Many others were physically and verbally abused. Police did nothing to intervene, already struggling to prevent protesters from breaking into the enclosed space with attendees.
At this point, many attendees were just exhausted and wanted to go home, or simply, use the restroom.
The violent standoff lasted for hours, transforming into a mass sit-in on the road. Eventually, police intervened and forcibly removed them.
Having cleared the first impasse, resistance was still to be found under a nearby bridge. This time, attendees shouted “We are here! We are here!” determined not to be intimidated.
By 9 PM, a corridor was finally created for the festival’s attendees to return back to the subway station through an opposite entrance.
Visibly shaken by the violence witnessed, many of the attendees and organisers broke down in tears in front of Dongincheon Station. One young man, draped in a rainbow flag, collapsed to the floor, howling, “What did I do wrong?”
Incheon police booked eight protesters without detention. No one was prosecuted.
“Lack of evidence”
Organisers condemned the violence, and appealed for any witness or photographic evidence documenting attendees being subjected to violence.
A study by a research team at Korea University found that 88% of attendees were suffering from acute stress disorder, while 66% had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Organisers of Incheon Pride pressed charges against individuals who violently attacked and obstructed the parade. They also filed a complaint against Incheon Police officials to National Human Rights Commission of Korea for failure to take proper measures on-site in response to human rights violations.
In May this year, the prosecution decided not to indict anyone due to “lack of evidence,” saying they “cannot prove the relation between the violence and [hate] organisations,” also noting that “photos alone do not specify the perpetrator(s)”.
Outraged, Incheon Pride organisers put out a statement: “Countless people saw the violence and hate, suffering physical and mental damage. The fact that police failed to identify a single perpetrator, even though photos and videos were submitted clearly designating [the perpetrators] proves their incompetence and irresponsibility again.”
They said that “the prosecution should clearly recognise that this is a case of anti-human rights violence based on hatred and ignorance.”
International diplomacy steps in
Meanwhile, embassies based in the South Korean capital were known to have held discussions about Incheon Pride, disgusted by the images that came out of Incheon that day. Many had already been frequent attendees (with booths) of Seoul Pride. Embassies eventually decided to attend all pride events in South Korea throughout the year — or at least share the task of attending among them.
“Everyone should be given a fair opportunity, no matter who they are, where they come from, or who they love.” — Extract from statement by Ambassadors to South Korea from the UK, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the EU.
Their first presence outside Seoul was at Daegu Queer Culture Festival in July.
While distributing rainbow stickers and badges can be seen as fun, their presence alone at these festivals is a clear display of international solidarity and indirect exertion of pressure on the South Korean government to make South Korea a tolerant country free of discrimination.
And hopefully have stepped up security.
What now?
In a way, things wouldn’t be the way they are today had Incheon not been such a disaster last year. If anything, it was an eye-opener, a visceral demonstration of how human rights, especially those of minority groups, still have a long way to go.
As one activist put it to me:
“Incheon did not happen out of the blue. It had been brewing, and it finally erupted.”
The “Christians” struck the LGBTQ community at its weakest link in a spectacular way. Many came to Incheon feeling fuzzy and upbeat from the success of Seoul Pride. Police also underestimated the sheer mobilisation power of the hate groups. People came to realise that Seoul, despite its small but vibrant LGBTQ scene, is not representative of the situation in the rest of the country.
But clashes or not, tomorrow’s event will have the eyes of international diplomacy watching. Up to 2,500 protesters? Who cares. They can scream as loud as they like. What the LGBTQ community in South Korea so desperately needs is visibility, and the “Christians” are providing just that.
If anything, it is because of the hate groups and their vile antics that awareness and visibility of sexual minorities is slowly entering the public consciousness and conversation.
To them, I say thank you.
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For updates on Incheon Queer Culture Festival 2019 (August 31), follow live tweets here: @koryodynasty
