Korean Pride (Dae Han Min Guk!)

Reading all the World Cup and SF Pride-related messages on Facebook today, I realized that I never wrote about my experience in Seoul almost two weeks ago.  The memories won't be as fresh but I may as well write about it now!

So I headed down to Seoul on a Friday night, as per usual, and crashed at Jen's apartment.  The big deal that weekend (and it was a BIG DEAL) was Korea's first game in the World Cup, versus Greece.  It was taking place at 8 PM Korean time on Saturday night and, by all accounts, was set to be an experience not to be missed.  But a much much smaller deal, at least for the vast majority of Koreans, was the Seoul Pride 'festival' and 'parade,' also set for Saturday.  Two big reasons for me to head to Seoul, and two giant reminders of the differences between here and home.




The Pride festival was first, as it took place on Saturday afternoon.  Anne and I showed up at some random plaza in the center of Seoul, wrapped in $5 rubber knee-length raincoats, ready for the festivities.  Instead of feeling festive, though, I just felt sad.  This was it???  Two rows of pop-up tents and a couple hundred people (if that) milling about in the pouring rain?  Surely, with this being the only gay pride festival in the entire country of Korea, not just in Seoul, there had to be more to it?  But no.  This really was it.  When Sacramento and its sole gay-ghetto intersection is looking like a glorious getaway, you know you're in a dire situation.

The whole experience made me remember how lucky I am to be where I'm from.  A place where my boyfriend and I can walk down the street holding hands (well, at least in some places... ahem, San Francisco), a place where prejudice may yet exist but where there are still loads of people who accept you for who you are and not who you love.  My friend Jason is a budding documentarian who is planning to do a doc on gay culture in Asian countries and he had to apply for a special "press pass" in advance in order to have permission to take photos and video at the event.  Yes, that's right, I could have had my camera confiscated if I myself had tried to take any photos simply because gay people in Korea are terrified of being outed or being identified as sympathetic to gay acceptance.  It made me immensely sad for so many people here and really made me miss home.

But then the parade started.  I won't say the parade changed all my aforementioned opinions.  But it did give me a bit of a boost, some glimmer of hope that this absurdly repressed country may be growing up, slowly but surely.  The 'parade' was (literally) only 3 trucks, making a loop around a portion of the river, with approximately 200-300 people trailing along and behind.  The first truck was the 'lesbian truck,' by far my favorite thanks to the two cute little Korean girls dancing to cheesy K-pop in barely-there leather bustiers, soaking wet because of the rain, riling up the 50 or so Korean lesbians following right behind, and I mean riling.  Those girls screamed louder than anything.  The second truck was the mens' truck, with your usual drag queens and shirtless guys dancing to Abba.  Cliched, yet hilarious.  The last truck was the activist truck, with political banners and people yelling through bullhorns.  As we made the loop in a sea of umbrellas and raincoats, the sun started to peek out.  People stared at us from the sides of the road, some cheering thinking we were having a World Cup celebration, others dumbfounded, others disgusted.  Some random dude started passing out free bottles of makgulli on the corner... I mean, where in the US do people just hand out free bottles of alcohol to revelers?  Jason told me that the first Korean Pride festival he ever attended, 3 years ago, was 75% foreigners.  This was definitely the reverse, probably 25% foreigners and 75% Koreans.  It made me think about how each year is another small step for gay people in this country and eventually enough of those small steps will turn into giant strides, and it finally put a smile on my face and I was able to just laugh and enjoy the ridiculous lesbians.

Me and Anne with her Red Devil horns

Later that night, Anne and I (and Jen and Chris and the others we met up with) were exposed to a whole other type of Korean pride; that is, the ever-pervasive national pride that Koreans have but in an explosive, out-of-control way that one doesn't often see.  The plaza outside City Hall in Seoul was packed with thousands of people, all there to drink and watch Korea cream Greece on giant video screens, while chanting "Dae han min guk!" over and over again.  (Dae han min guk is basically the long-form name of the Republic of Korea... in the Korean language, this is usually shortened to just han guk, which is how people here refer to their home country.)  Listening to the massive throngs of people chanting the 'majestic'-version name of their country all in the name of kicking Greece's ass was pretty amazing and mind-boggling.  Americans definitely have an intense national pride, but you just don't see it manifested in this way very often. 

In a bar near City Hall, right after Korea scored their first goal. After this, we knew we had to hit the streets.

And of course, things blew up when we did destroy Greece, 2-0.  A giant sea of red losing their minds and shouting louder than anything you'll ever hear in your life.  Red Devils t-shirts everywhere you looked, red devil horns that light up on every head, horns blowing, chants of "Dae han min guk, dae han min guk!!!"  True, there was also lots of shoving, falling over, and vomiting in the streets, but hey... it's the World Cup right?  It only comes once every 4 years  ;)

Sunday, I was exhausted, but in a good way.  It was really cool to see two very different types of pride on display on one solitary day in this very unusual country I currently call home.  On one hand, the pride shown by a tiny, nearly invisible minority of people to whom I feel a strong kinship and who are slowly clawing their way out of the national closet year after year.  On the other hand, the enormous, almost tangible pride emanated from an entire nation of people, wanting to show the world just how awesome they are.  It was a lesson in contrasts from a country that is often referred to as one giant contradiction.