The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced this past week that it had canceled its approval for the organizers of the 24th annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival, to hold the massive LGBTQ+ event scheduled for July 1 at Seoul Plaza.
The huge central plaza is located in front of Seoul City Hall at Taepyeongno, Jung-gu in the South Korean capital city.
The daily English-language newspaper the Korea Times reported that the SQCF organizing committee and Christian Television System Culture Foundation had both applied to book the plaza for their respective events on April 3, 90 days before their events scheduled for July 1.
Since 2015, the event has been held in front of the city hall, except for 2020 and 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic rules prevented any public gatherings. The festival has drawn thousands of attendees each summer to downtown Seoul, supported by human rights groups, university clubs and foreign embassies. It routinely draws protests, and the police presence is often heavy.
In a statement to local media outlets, Yang Sun-woo, chief organizer of the SQCF, said the city’s move is an act of discrimination. “Each year, we struggle to secure a venue to hold the event,” she said.
“In previous years, the city government held in-person meetings with all concerned parties to rearrange the dates if more than one group wanted to book Seoul Plaza, as stated in the regulations. But this year, the city government cut corners and tossed the issue to the civic committee on very short notice,” Yang told the Korea Times on May 4.
Yang added that the group became aware of the city’s approval of the CTS event before the final decision was delivered on May 3, via a local media interview with Lee Sung-bae, a ruling People Power Party member of the Seoul Metropolitan Council, as well as the CTS’ concert promotion message on its website.
Yang said that, given the circumstances, the SQCF organizing committee “has no choice but to suspect that the Christian event was planned to oppose the queer culture festival.”
The CTS Cultural Foundation is linked to the CTS Christian broadcast outlet that opposes homosexuality and clashes over the Seoul Queer Culture Festival are a yearly battle as same-sex marriage is not recognized and anti-discrimination laws face strong resistance by those groups.
A spokesperson for CTS Cultural Foundation claimed that the timing was not aimed at blocking the LGBTQ festival.
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com
