Come in, Korea 1997, When There Were “No Gay People in Korea!”
This is a time capsule from actually not so long ago, when I was told by Korean people, “THERE ARE NO GAY PEOPLE IN KOREA.” This was my litmus test with which to decide to never put any stock into what that person told me thereafter, cuz they was telling fibs.
The first little “hotel” the Fulbright program put us in back in July of 1994 was in 낙원상가 (Nagwon Market) near Jongno 2-ga. And the basement of the place was a gay bar with drag queens hanging out and chitchatting and drinking downstairs all night long, and I quickly figured out that this was a love motel for gay couples, men only. When I told Koreans that there would be a bunch of men checking into the hotel for like a few hours at a time, all wearing suits and ties as if they had just come from work, Koreans who were defensive of the country told me that they were salarymen who just wanted to “rest” before going home, which sounds like bullshit to anybody with half a brain.
So my first experience in Korea was in a back alley love motel for gay dudes. On DAY 1. So when people in my small town I was sent to would swear up and down that there were no gay people, no prostitutes, and no examples or cases of a whole bunch of other things that seemed ridiculous for any human culture not to have, I was suspicious at first, and then after that, completely dismissive of anybody giving me such lines of bullshit.
As anyone should be who hears people trying to tell you that Korea is an exceptional case in human cultures, and is devoid of certain basic social phenomena that are really a function of the essential human condition more than a feature specific to certain cultures (remember, a major argument made by Social Repressives back then was that homosexuality was a “Western” thing, from “western culture”).
That’s the kind of cultural essentialist bullshit that should make you reach for your (figurative) gun, because someone is trying to ideologically fleece you.
