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The 19th edition of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival was held at Seoul Plaza on Saturday, July 14. Nine of the 105 event booths at the plaza was manned by 15 government bodies: the embassies of 13 countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the UK and the US), the EU’s delegation to South Korea and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the only South Korean government agency to participate in the festival.

Foreign embassies’ official participation in the Seoul Queer Culture Festival began in 2014, when the American, French and German embassies set up booths for the 15th edition of the festival, which was held in the Sinchon neighborhood of Seoul. One year later, in 2015, Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage while the US Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutional throughout the US, which was an encouraging development for the global campaign for LGBT rights.

As it happened, the festival expanded its scale as it relocated to Seoul Plaza that same year. Since Seoul Plaza had room for more festival booths, the number of foreign embassies participating in the festival continued to increase. During that year’s opening ceremony, ambassadors and other representatives from 16 embassies took the stage together to read a joint declaration supporting LGBT rights.

The US embassy, which is participating in the festival for the third time this year, got people’s attention by hanging the six-colored rainbow flag – which symbolizes LGBT rights – from its Gwanghwamun building on July 7. The rainbow flag has appeared on the embassy’s wall twice now, first last year and now this year.

“We are proud to display the rainbow ‘Pride’ colors on the façade of our Embassy in Gwangwhamun in solidarity with human-rights and civil-society organizations in the Republic of Korea and around the world that promote the fundamental rights of LGBTI persons, including their right to freedom of assembly and to live free from violence. The United States remains committed to human rights and the fundamental freedoms of all persons,” the US embassy said in a post on its website. Since last year, the US embassy has also officially participated in a queer culture festival in the Daegu area.

During this year’s festival, the Netherlands’ embassy in Seoul is supporting the exhibition of the Amsterdam Rainbow Dress, a LGBT rights project by Dutch artists. This 16m-long dress is made of the flags of 75 countries around the world that prosecute homosexuality as a crime. Whenever one of these countries abolishes the law in question, that country’s flag is removed from the dress and replaced with a rainbow flag.

Since its creation in 2016, the Amsterdam Rainbow Dress has been photographed and exhibited throughout Europe and North America. When a law criminalizing homosexuality was abolished by Belize, a new rainbow flag was added to the dress. The dress was displayed for the first time in Asia at Seoul Plaza from 10 am until 8 pm on July 14.

Other embassies that are officially participating have expressed their excitement and support on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The German and Canadian embassies posted news about the festival in Korean and their own languages, while the EU delegation to South Korea tweeted that it had invited activists “to learn more about LGBTI human rights issues in KR ahead of our participation in Seoul Queer Culture Festival.”

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The National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the only South Korean government body to participate in the festival over the past two years, hung the rainbow flag over its office in Seoul on July 12. “We hung the rainbow banner on our building to signify our support and solidarity with human rights and civic organizations in promoting LGBT rights and tackling hate speech on the occasion of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival,” a spokesperson for the commission explained.

By Park Soo-jin, staff reporter

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