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31 ‘The haters say that homosexuals go against nature, or say homosexuality is the “evil cause” of AIDS and that it can spread the disease and destroy the state. Under the logic that homosexuality is harmful to oneself, the homophobic powers make alliances with conservative journalists, political parties and Christians, and widen the reach of the right wing. You must keep in mind that against this background, the voices and slogans of sexual minorities are hard to spread.’ Ung Groove Korea: How did Solidarity come to create this new literary award for LGBTQ writers? Ung: The Yook Woo Dang Literary Award started out as a part of last year’s event com- memorating Yun’s death. Yun was a member of Solidarity’s Sexual Minority Youth Pride Team. Each April, Solidarity creates an event to remember those LGBTQs who’ve passed on, including Yun. Last year we upped the scale and organized a cultural festival. The lit- erary award was one of the featured events. We also held a memorial service. In life, Yun wanted to be a sijo poet. He wrote sijo poems. After his suicide, Solidarity collected the poems and published them as a book. Up to that time we’d read his sijo with a general sympathy for his thoughts and emo- tions but stopped there. Then there began to be talk about starting a literary prize as a way to honor him, as the first Korean LGBTQ who left behind his story explicitly in writing. Be- yond reading Yun’s works, we also wanted to discover the stories of Korean sexual minority youth today, their struggles and experiences, through the printed word. That was the goal we set. More than reading Yun’s work, sa- voring it and looking back on his life, we all thought writing our own stories and thoughts in words could be a form of practice or ac- tivism. The fve winning prose works last year were, on the whole, very bleak, focusing on some dark aspects of the social expe- rience like repressed desire, teen suicide, rejection by family upon disclosure of sexuality or of HIV/AIDS diagnosis, fear of same-sex desire as a communicable disease. Do you see a space ever opening up for optimism and playfulness in Kore- an LGBTQ literature? The judging committee made an effort to get distance from the negative images and heavy content that society has long used to describe homosexuality. The submissions last year had some heavy content. But a lot of the submissions were light and happy. There was a comparatively wide diversity of genres. Through the literary award, we always have hope of discovering new narratives, new lan- guage. Still, I must say, comparing this year’s en- tries with last year’s, the stories surrounding sexual minorities are still dark. That was one of the important points the judges brought up. Even though Korean sexual minorities live in a barren environment, there’s no rule that says that even literary works have to be dark and heavy. They also pointed out that entries all had similar backgrounds and subject matter. Es- pecially prominent among this year’s submis- sions was the theme of falling in love with a same-sex schoolmate, reaching an obstacle, becoming frustrated and leaving school. Of course, behind the darkness and heavi- ness of the works are the difficulties to which sexual minority youth are subjected in society. I think that the self-esteem of the writers is as withered as the (tone of the) works. But now that the second award is over, we need to think hard about how to encourage new types of writing and narratives. In a society where gay youth suicides are not publicly reported as such (perhaps the family would keep the motive secret or ascribe the death to another cause), it seems the Yook Woo Dang Award rep- resents a new institutionalized visibility for the LGBTQ suicide issue, and could have the potential to become a sort of standard in the battle for antidiscrimina- tion legislation. How do you personally think the award could be most effectively used as a political tool? Not only in foreign countries but also in Ko- rea, sexual minority issues have rapidly come to the surface of society. You mentioned sui- cide, but in fact, various homophobia-related issues are occurring in schools and families together with school violence, bullying and social ostracization. And not only that: Even within the sexual minority community in Ko- rea, due to the ubiquitous bar culture, there are very few places where sexual minority youth can enjoy themselves. Yun Hyun-seok (Aug. 7, 1984 - April 26, 2003)