South Korea faces major anti-queer backlash after COVID-19 outbreak
By David Reddish May 10, 2020 at 10:05am · 11 comments
Itaewon (via Wikimedia Commons)
The South Korean city of Seoul has experienced another outbreak of the coronavirus, which reportedly originated with a gay man. The patient in question visited several of the city's gay bars last weekend. Now, the city's LGBTQ community faces a major public backlash.
The 31-year-old man likely infected at least 14 other people, according to The Guardian. Now members of the public have begun soliciting funds on social media to have the city's gay venues shut down for good.
Though homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea, queer citizens still face social stigma and discrimination. With the outbreak of COVID-19 traced to gay venues, that stigma could get even worse.
Related: PHOTOS: Sexy South Korean gay guys emerge from the shadows
"I don't usually go to gay clubs and it's been two years since I visited Itaewon [Seoul's gay neighborhood]," said Hong Yoo-jin, a 35-year-old IT worker. "But I read on gay community websites that Youtubers are joining gay apps to out gay men live. So myself and everyone I know have deleted our photos from all of our accounts."
"The company where I work is a regular Korean company, which means they are very anti-gay," another unidentified gay man told The Guardian. "I have taken part in conversations where my boss and colleagues said all gay men should be put to death in a gas chamber. If they find out that I was at a gay club, they would most likely tell me to leave under some other pretext or make my life there a living hell so I would have no choice but to leave."
South Korean police say they have the names of 1,500 people who visited gay venues last weekend. Law enforcement is also encouraging anyone who may have visited any of the locations go get tested for COVID-19 immediately.
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Chrisk
This makes as much sense as finding out someone with blue eyes spread covid and now we got to go after all people with blue eyes. Sounds like they were just looking for an excuse.
This along with China being very racist doesn't surprise me.
May 10, 2020 at 11:05am
But this story is about South Korea, not China. Or did you just misread the entire article? And is China or South Korea more racist than the US? Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party modeled the Nuremberg Laws on brutal US anti-miscegenation and racist segregation laws.
May 10, 2020 at 8:05pm
hildegardrdungan
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Jussie_Racist_Clown
Chrisk is as stupid as a stone, as his diction, spelling and sentence structure will (of coarse, sarc) attest. Kagol2, he doesn't even know what the Nuremberg Laws are. He can barely spell his name.
So what happened is that Chrisk Made a valid point about people with Blue eyes, and to deflect from his point about how idiotic the homophobia was, you angrily lash out.
Hmmmm, why would his pointing out that homophobia is wrong enrage you do much? Ohhhhh, right, this is the same old bigoted right wing troll with a new screename.
jonasalden
Except I don't think that's Chrisk's point. Take out the aside about China, and his point is pretty clear. "A community that is stigmatized IN GOOD TIMES would be among the first targeted in bad times." His mention of China was no doubt a reference to the African population in Wuhan. Rather than asking for clarification, Kangol2 and Jussie_Racist-Clown took the lazy way out and piled on, which I think is tempting for the common.
No, I got his point about scapegoating, but as is typical, a bit of self-reflection about homophobia here might be in order. And China was not mentioned in the article, but as I said, however racist China's policies may be, they don't hold a candle to the US, now or in the past.
jayceecook
I don't know why people are surprised. SK is actually more homophobic, racist, and sexist than people think. Unfortunately a lot of east Asian countries are. When I was seriously considering going to SK to teach ESL I spoke with many Americans and Canadians over there and they had a few warnings about how I might be treated.
I feel bad for those men who fear for their lives and jobs. That shite with outing men on dating apps is disgusting and should be made illegal. But different countries, different cultures. Not that NA would be much different.
Hussain-TheCanadian
It would be awesome if you can share some of those warnings jayceecook, I'd like to know more.
Notice how they're trying to use the LGBT community to deflect from the fact that ALL of the nightclubs were open? Now when thousands of straight people catch it because THEY went out, media and bigots have given them a gay boogeyman they can blame.
In the olden days they used the Jews as the scapegoats for pandemics. Today it's the gays.
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