Korean Job Discussion Forums

[paperbag princess]

hey, i'm just wondering, where are all the lesbians? everyone knows where homo hill is, but where are the ladies who love ladies?

not to stereotype, but is ehwa's women's uni/sinchon a good guess?

[coolsage]

Kimchi prevents lesbianism (dammit!).

[JongnoGuru]

A lesbian "scene"? An area of the city with expressely lesbian or at least lesbian-friendly establishments? Not sure.

I have seen sooo many lines drawn in the sand by Koreans -- things that 'no matter how rich or how worldly or how free & easy we might eventually become, there is NO WAY that X or Y or Z will EVER be tolerated here in "this Korea"! And that's that!! Harrumph!! Grrr!!! ' -- only to watch years later as the winds of time begin to obscure and obliterate those lines. And when that happens you naturally look around for all those harrumphers, they were so sure and yet so wrong, and you want to ask them, 'How could you have been so sure and yet so wrong about X and Y and even Z?!' But everyone you talk to insists that they saw it coming all along, and no, they weren't the ones who said 'it couldn't happen here', and 'oh, you probably just misunderstood all the Koreans who said it couldn't happen here'... And so you begin to doubt any Korean's ability not merely to control the direction and pace of cultural change (some of them would call it "infection" or "pollution"), but even simply to predict it with a fair degree of accuracy.

So whilst I (and probably any Korean) would have had a good chuckle at this thread's question were this a few short years ago... today I think it's a valid question and I'm not snickering anymore.

A couple weeks ago I was having dinner at a small, slightly down-market and wholly unremarkable Korean restaurant with some Korean friends. This was in an area of Seoul (up in SPINOZA's neck of the woods, I believe) that is neither seedy nor opulent... "solidly middle-class with working-class pretensions"?

Anyhow, as our meal was winding down, an ajuma-aged (40-45) woman came in, sat down and started chatting with the owner-ajuma a short distance from our table. The owner-ajuma was your typical restaurant-owner ajuma: youngish (late 30s), permed hair, aproned, minimal makeup. Her friend... in a sense, her friend requires no lengthy, detailed description at all, because she can be visualised so easily. If you were to ask a thousand Westerners selected at random to describe this person in two words or less, a fairly large %age would say "Asian lesbian" or perhaps "Asian bulldike". (Yes, I know that's an offensive term, but I mean it purely descriptively here.) In fact, if you typed those words into an online stock-photo search engine, the results would be likenesses of this worthy, she was that archetypical.

None of the Koreans I was with seemed to notice that woman. (Yet if I wore short-sleeved shirts to the office two days before Corporate Korea had officially declared the start of "Spring/Short-sleeve Shirt Season", I'd get the old owl-hoots: "Oooow, spring comes early for that foreigner! tee-hee!! tee-hee!! " every time I rode the elevator. )

No, the Koreans I was with didn't seem to notice her until I pointed her out. Then it was, "no way! there are no lesbians in Korea!" or "she's too old to be a lesbian" , "I think she just likes that punk/mannish style" (hairdo, clothes, etc.). And as we were paying & leaving, which interrupted the stern-looking conversation between owner-ajuma and ABD-ajuma, the glare and the demeanour of ABD-ajuma was... again, just very stereotypical and reminiscent of encounters with a few BDs in the West: grim, severe, charmless, inhospitable and unfriendly toward us.

There are many guys who are not openly gay, and who are very affable and very sociable in group settings, but girls will often detect little clues... something there that most (straight) guys just won't pick up on because they're not looking for it. One girlfriend described it to me as "negative vibes" that a male friend of mine who she suspected of being gay was putting out, and her friends who'd met him agreed. Neither me nor any of my other male friends suspected it. But it turned out he was gay, and a year or so later he made it public.

Anyway, I think us guys may not be as perceptive as girls in these things, but one really has to be dense and blind (or Korean? ) not to immediately recognise that ABD in the restaurant as being... well, what I'd bet my own life she is.

Does the Seoul Sappho Society (?) still exist? They use to advertise in the Korea Times back in the early '90s, and perhaps earlier than that, as: "women who enjoy the company of other women", which flew completely under Korean authorities' radar. Or perhaps the authorities did understand but didn't bother them, assuming it was just foreigners being their usual "freaky" selves.

[chronicpride]

[JongnoGuru]

And this. It's the group I whose (former) name I couldn't remember properly.

http://www.seoulsisters.org/bars_clubs.htm

[pest2]

A slight departure from the topic of lesbians. Gay guys.
I was out on a sort of a date over a year ago with this Korean woman. We were at this jazz place in Itaewon. Good music, good crowd, good times. About mid-way through the evening, a couple of guys came and sat down next to us at our large table. They were very friendly and asked if we were a couple (which we were technically not I s'pose) and where I was from and the usual batch of Korean to foreigner questions you seem to get each and every time you encounter a Korean. As I was answering, I noticed the guys seemed a bit effeminate. But of course, alot of guys in Korea are like that so I just thought nothing of it.

Then, I kinda noticed them sitting real real close together and once one guy took the other's hand and was talking to him real close up-like... Of course, upon recollection, my date couldnt recount this event in order to confirm it.

Then, my date got up to go to the bathroom. After that, one of the guys told me that "Americans could understand him and his friend better than other Koreans". Then he hugged his friend.

I mean, I've seen other gay guys in public. Had friends who are gay. I was like 99.9% sure they were gay unless maybe there was some sort of massive misinterpretation on my part going on.

Then, my date came back from the bathroom. While some loud music was going, I whispered in her ear that I had just learned that those guys are gay. She said, "NO!!" as if it was some kind of joke. But I kept insisting and finally I got her to ask them. I think she asked them something like, "how is your relationship together?" They replied that they were not romantic and just friends.

Now, actually I'm pretty sure she knew they were gay too. But I dont think she wanted to admit it to ME... Im a foreigner.

Later, the week before I was about to complete my contract and leave Korea (at that time she and I thought I'd never return), she revealed to me that she thought they were gay, too... but for some reason, she wanted to be sure I was leaving shortly thereafter.

Interesting.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Give most hagwon teachers enough chocolate martinis and they'll do just about anything.

[cwemory]

Labris(��긮�� )in Hongdae is popular with some of my friends. Although, alledgedly, they are not particulalry tolerant of miscegenation.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

[itaewonguy]

lesbian park in Shinchon is famous!
also the gay park across from the Hyatt is famous too..

why you considering charging to girls now?

[Porter_Goss]

[lastat06513]

Wow...paperbag princess, you just missed the scene by about a year then.

If you asked the same question, I could've told you to go to Camp Colburn in Hannam City. They just closed down the base and sent everyone to Camp Humphreys

My old unit had its headquarters there and they held all the female soldiers there hoping it would "entertain" alot of the male soldiers (IE, "get some")....it didn't work.
Many of them hitched up with EACH OTHER and went to "Fairy Hill" (it is the hill area to the side of King Club in Itaewon.

I can tell you, it made alot of men heartbroken at the time

[stakoosky]

you want lesbians? work at my school....it's run by them....but you can't be gay at our school...it's against the contract. >

[Troll_Bait]

Friends and I stumbled upon a lesbian bar in Itaewon one night.

I'm terrible at directions, and add to that the fact that it was dark, we had been drinking, etc., but I'll try.

Between Itaewon and Han-gang-jin stations, there's a kind of hill. After walking up many steps, it's somewhere up there.

As far as Korean bars go, it had a pretty nice atmosphere and layout.

Men were turned away at the door (to prevent ogling at the "freak show," etc.).