hankyoreh

At close to midnight, men can be seen entering a cafe in Seoul's bustling university district of Sinchon in groups of two or three.
While at first glance it may appear to be an ordinary cafe, its customers don't just go there to drink beer. On entering, most customers first go behind a curtain in a corner of the cafe to put on women's clothing, a wig and makeup, before taking a seat for a chat. Rush, catering especially to crossdressers and transgenders, is a cafe owned by a 46-year-old man who goes by the female name Lee Cho-rong.
"Many people in South Korea don't really understand the difference between gay and transgender. I'm not gay. I was born a man but eager to live as a woman and be beautiful," said Lee, dressed in a red and pink women's "hanbok," Korea's traditional
dress. "Some of our regulars say they come here to take off stress at the end of the day by breaking taboos that say men should not wear women's clothing."
Born the youngest of three sons to conservative Protestant parents, Lee keeps his transgender lifestyle secret by living as a man during the day and a woman at night.
"I'm planning to have a sex-change operation only after my old mother dies. There's no way I could now, my mother might be shocked to death."
Lee recalls discovering his inner female identity in the second year of elementary school. "My mother could not afford to buy me blue stockings for a school talent show, so she borrowed a red pair from her neighbor.
At first I refused to wear them because it was the wrong color, the one which girls were supposed to wear. I eventually wore them because I had no other option, but didn't feel bad, strangely enough."
He now feels more comfortable wearing women's clothing than men's, and when spending time with female friends. As is required of all South Korean men, Lee completed
approximately two years of mandatory military duty. After graduating from university, he earned a living in low-paying manual jobs, such as washing windows of high-rise buildings and in manufacturing. "I chose such hard jobs in a desperate effort to
live a normal life like other men, but couldn't," he said.
Out of loneliness, he started an Internet site called "Rush for crossdressers" years ago.
The number of subscribers to the Internet site recently rose to about 2,600 after the homosexual-themed Korean film "King and the Clown" sold a record-high 12 million tickets at the box office.
The movie's unexpected popularity reflects a change of attitude in South Korean society toward those with different sexual preferences, Lee said. The presence of transsexuals in society no longer shocks South Koreans thanks to strong media coverage of transsexual stars like Harisu.
"There are many difficult moments in the life of a transsexual. My most embarrassing moments were when I have had to show my personal identification card in public," Harisu, a male-to-female transsexual, told Yonhap News Agency by telephone. "I couldn't get
a passport, visa or even my own bank accounts because I was legally a man," the 31-year-old singer and model said.
"This is what I felt while performing in China: while South Koreans have surely became more generous about people who are different from them than they were before, they are still very conservative."
On Thursday, the Supreme Court opened a public hearing to make a guideline for lower courts on whether to allow transsexuals to be able to change their gender in their family registry.
It was the first court hearing on the gender change issue in the country's judicial history.
After more than three hours of heated debate by advocates and opponents from medical and religious circles, Chief Justice Lee Yong-hun shook his head and said "It's a very difficult question."

The court plans to make a decision after another hearing next month. During Thursday's hearing, Lee Moo-sang, a urology professor at Yonsei University's Medical College, said transsexualism is determined in the perinatal period. The medical doctor suggested the government establish a system in which the court permits transgender people to be able to undergo sex-change operations and also legally change their gender
after receiving a diagnosis from psychiatrists and surgeons and the consent of their family.
Rev. Park Yeong-ryul, head of the conservative Protestant group Christian Academy for National Development, argued against Lee's opinion, saying "God did not endow mankind with the right to choose sex."
"If we approve transsexuality, we should do the same for homosexuality. Many people have died of AIDS as a result of homosexuality," Rev. Park claimed.
An increasing number of transgender people in South Korea have asked courts to let them change their sex in family registries since the popular entertainer Harisu was allowed by a district court to legally switch her gender from male to female in 2002. To
date, however, only 25 people have been allowed to legally change genders, and requests from 26 others were turned down. Three are appealing the court rulings at the Supreme Court.
If the court rules in favor of the people after the hearings, many of the nation's estimated 1,000 transgender citizens are likely to follow suit and change their legal gender.
A considerable number of transsexuals are forced into working in the sex or entertainment industries because their job opportunities are strictly limited, according to the cafe owner Lee.
"What we want from society is understanding and to be able to get a regular job and live a normal life like other women," Lee said. "We're all God's children." Seoul, May 23 (Yonhap News)