hankyoreh

A poster with a message opposing a planned “mini queer parade” at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul remained taped to a bulletin board on campus as of the morning of May 22. (Ko Byung-chan/The Hankyoreh)

Campus Pride parades at South Korean universities are facing difficulties due to negative attitudes toward LGBTQ people.

The situation comes in the wake of the city of Seoul’s refusal to permit the use of the plaza in front of its City Hall for the Seoul Queer Culture Festival event scheduled for July 1. Human rights groups expressed concerns about anti-LGBTQ attitudes spreading into campus environments.

According to the Hankyoreh’s investigation on Tuesday, the inaugural Sungkonghoe University “mini queer parade,” which had been scheduled to take place on June 1, was recently postponed.

The campus event had been organized by a human rights committee consisting of Sungkonghoe University students to commemorate Pride Month in June and protest Seoul’s decision to disallow the use of its plaza for a Pride festival.

The university demanded that the event be postponed or canceled in response to opposition expressed from within and outside the campus.

“We received a large number of complaints voicing opposition by mail and the e-people service,” explained a Sungkonghoe University official, adding that “the school’s position is that since there is opposition, we should go through a procedure of winning support.”

Indeed, posters expressing opposition to the event have been placed all over the Sungkonghoe campus.

“In Korea, the attitudes toward these festivals are mostly negative,” read one of the posters in a message written by a student who identified themselves as belonging to the university’s social sciences department.

“If the festival goes ahead on campus, we will face negative attitudes and pressure from the public. It could also have a negative impact on next year’s [government] financial support assessment,” it predicted.

Anti-LGBTQ messages were also posted on the anonymous campus community app Everytime.

“Sexual minorities should undergo psychological testing,” wrote one user.

“I guess we shouldn’t eat campus meals on the queer parade day — we might get monkeypox,” wrote another.

Some students have also been gathering signatures from people opposing the Pride parade on campus.

Human rights groups were critical of universities showing the same sort of anti-LGBTQ attitudes revealed in Seoul’s decision not to grant use of its plaza.

“LGBTQ people exist everywhere, but the reality in South Korea right now is that when they ask to be allowed to use public spaces, they are refused,” said Yang Sun-woo, who chairs the organizing committee for the Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF).

“Now it looks like something similar is taking place in universities,” she added.

Kwon So-won, the chairperson of the Seoul National University student/minority human rights council, organized a “university rainbow march” to denounce the decision to disallow the use of Seoul Plaza for the parade.

“It’s discriminatory to insist that only events that focus on a particular issue have to face a process of social consensus or censorship,” she stressed.

On May 3, the city of Seoul’s citizens’ committee for open plaza management declined to accept a usage notice submitted by the SQCF organizing committee.

The Seoul Queer Parade has been held in Seoul every summer since 2000 to promote LGBTQ visibility, human rights, cultural access, and pride.

By Ko Byung-chan, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]