This essay is a part of Going Out, a sequence of tales celebrating LGBTQIA+ journey.
One fateful night time in 2012, I stepped into Friends, a homosexual bar in Seoul’s Jongno neighborhood, and rolled my eyes once I heard somebody talking English. Of the 2 main homosexual neighborhoods in Seoul, vacationers often went to flashy, clubby Itaewon. Gay locals like me went to the extra chill, homier bars of shabbier Jongno close by, the place one may solely sometimes encounter, say, a Japanese bear couple wanting perplexed as they searched for our extra discreet watering holes. To hear some American infiltrate my favourite dive was simply an excessive amount of. But then I sat down on the bar, appeared over on the offending voice, and was promptly dazzled by the speaker.
Reader, he and I have a good time our tenth wedding ceremony anniversary this July.
What’s homosexual life like in Seoul? The best method to discover out is to learn Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, which I translated from Korean into English, for its candid portrayal of the glory and despair of loving and being beloved as a younger queer in South Korea’s capital. During the tour for this e-book, an viewers member in Bristol, England, requested us concerning the secret to a lengthy and profitable queer relationship. Going in opposition to my very own expertise, I answered, “Don’t marry a Korean man.” Sang Young agreed with me—we’re simply too neurotic and really entitled. But in the event you insist on at the least rubbing elbows with homosexual Seoulites if you go to our truthful metropolis, it’s important to step out of the Itaewon vacationer bubble and make your method to Jongno 3-ga station (Lines 1, 3, and 5) on a weekend night time.
Smack in the middle of town and inside strolling distance of the previous palaces like Gyeongbokgung and Changgyeonggung, Jongno has a many years lengthy historical past as a homosexual nightlife hub (Friends is one in every of South Korea’s oldest homosexual bars, established in 2004, according to its Instagram). In the 2000s and early 2010s, earlier than the arrival of homosexual relationship apps, all of Donhwamunro 11-gil, the road that runs alongside the southern fringe of Jongno’s Ikseondong Hanok Village, would have been lined with “pocha” soju distributors—meals hawkers sheltered below plastic tarps promoting tteokbokki and tempura, an city mainstay in Seoul nightlife because the Korean War. The clientele would have been overwhelmingly homosexual on Jongno Pocha Street, the whole neighborhood become one large homosexual out of doors block social gathering the place low-cost soju, grilled seafood, and playful banter with the aunties who ran the pochas would ring by means of the night time.
