This afternoon, Hamel told me about a rather interesting N. Korean defection story that appeared in the Oct. 28 edition of the Far Eastern Review (to which I do not have a subscription) that was picked up by the Dong-A Ilbo. 44-year-old Jang Yeong-jin worked in the fisheries industry up in North Hamgyeong Province, married to a pretty school teacher whom his mother fixed him up with. Problem is, he felt no sexual attraction to the woman, so he was continually stressed and uncomfortable in the sack.
After 7 years of marriage, the couple still had no children, and despite several visits to the hospital, they couldn’t discover the reason. They eventually had a son, but after 9 years of marriage, Jang finally applied for divorce. The North Korean authorities rarely allow divorces, however, and permission was denied.
In the end, believing his wife would be happier without him, he escaped to China in a bid to defect, but was apparently denied entry by the South Korean embassy. Returning to North Korea, he decided to skip the middle men of the S. Korean Foreign Ministry and defect the hard way through the DMZ in Gangwon Province. During the course of being investigated by the nice men of S. Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Jang said he defected because, well, he disliked having to share a bed with his wife.
But wait — this is where it gets interesting. Two years into his residence in S. Korea’s relatively open society, Jang happened upon a photograph in some newspaper of two men kissing. Apparently, this put some lead in his pencil, or to put it the Dong-A Ilbo way, “At that moment, he felt a thrill through his entire body.” It was then he realized he was gay.
Afterwards, he began reading gay magazines, visiting gay bars and “sharing love” with other men. Jang finally felt “boundless happiness.”
Ah, but it was not to last. Last year, a man with whom Jang had fallen in love after meeting him in a gay bar absconded with the W50 million the defector had managed to save up.
Penniless and ill, Jang lost his house and has been living in a rent house in Ansan. He vented, “Adjusting to life in the South has been tougher than crossing the DMZ.”
27 Comments
Wow next there will be a story about there being no Gays in South Korea. We all have heard SK has no gays or even AIDS. But reality has a way of shedding light on such matters.
Poor thing. I hope he finds love again soon.
I remember back in 1994-95 my (older) Korean male students telling me that there definitely were no gays in Korea. I almost believed them! However, I also had other Korean students telling me that there definitely WERE gays in Korea… And nowadays there’s Harisu… I guess the times are a-changin’, huh? Then again, what do I know? I get all my info on the US erection from attack ads. (Did you know that ALL US politicians are dirty, rotten scoundrels???)
All this in a nation that has even pure Korean words for homosexual and lesbian acts; the former I can’t remember, the latter is paendaejil (??????).
For those who read Korean, there’s an essay written at the time of the closure of Pagoda Theater (”P-Salon”) (link here) about its role as a meeting place for gays in Seoul.
As for there actually being gays in North Korea, this must be sad news for the NL faction person of the Democratic Labor Party, who voiced the opinion at the time of party elections that homosexuality is an aberration that exists only in a capitalist society. (Luckily the party members were a more enlightened, and he didn’t get elected.) Well, this story tells that he was in a sense correct, if there’s no way for a person in the North to know what the meaning of his likes and dislikes is.
And finally, there’s even an entry in one Korean dictionary about a man’s marriage to a man, at least according to the Chinese characters: (yubunam, ???) (my own entry of this sensational discovery). But perhaps, perhaps it was just a typo…
You know what they say about gay Republicans.
This is one of the most interesting article I have read concerning NK. Thanks!!
As for gays in Korea, these two American gays I met, told me that they *LOVED* going to Korea. Apparently there are gay populated Korean bath houses, and also, they get bombarded by attention by the local gays who dig the exotic foreign boy look. In short, they told me that they are treated like Adonis. Another interesting thing to note, they were also hardcore Republicans. They were very rich–go figure.
non Korean: please see this recent article entitled HIV Carriers Rise to 2,944 from the October 21st issue of Korea Times. I shouldd have blogged it but never got around to it. Korea admits it has AIDS and HIV, but it does have a very low (reported) figure compared to many countries.
Antti: surely you are having a joke on us? I can’t imagine you don’t know that the word is defined in the Korean-Korean dictionary as ???????????(????)[????] ??????? ?????? ?????. And it has been used with only that meaning every time I have heard or seen it.
Also, theoretically, that DLP candidate could still argue the same thing, since from the article it seems Mr Jang never knew anything about homosexuality until he came down here and saw men kissing each other.
By the way, for what it’s worth, the Far Eastern Economic Review, which has been around for over 50 years, is dead as of this week. It will no longer be Asia’s premier weekly news magazine. It will come back as a monthly in December. Commiserations to Donald Greenlees, whwo came to SoKo only this year as FEER’s Seoul bureau chief.
Of course he knows it’s ????, which is why he calls the dictionary entry ??? (which you can see proof of in his post) a “sensational discovery” and perhaps (and I would think most probably) a typo.
Yes, the Chinese characters printed in the dictionary for yubunam were in fact ???, which of course cannot be but a typo. (Or a nice little joke by the compilers or the typesetter or someone.)
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