Three years ago, Hong Suk-Chon was banished from television after he revealed he was gay.
This week, the 32-year-old entertainer will reappear on a television soap, playing an openly gay designer, in a sign that South Korea is slowly opening up to homosexuality.
”I don’t know about the older generation but there seems to be less abhorrence against homosexuals compared to the past,” Jung Yol, who runs the Seoul-based Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Federation, said on Wednesday.
In 2000, Hong’s coming out caused a sensation in South Korea, a deeply Confucian society with a strong Catholic church that even refused to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality, branding it as a Western malaise.
In the past years, however, South Korea became much more open to the issue with transsexual entertainer Ha Ri-Soo making it to the top in the industry and appearing in movies, a music video and live shows.
Last year, a South Korean court declared Ha to be a woman and allowed her to change her name.
South Korea’s SBS television channel said on Wednesday that Hong will play a supporting role in a twice-a-week drama called Complete Love, starting Saturday for a three-month season.
Hong will share the primetime limelight with three top South Korean actors in the drama, written by Kim Soo-hyun, one of South Korea’s most famous scriptwriters who is known for her family dramas.
Complete Love is a story about a man who takes care of his wife dying from an incurable disease. Hong plays the friend of the couple.
Last month, Hong spoke to Chosun Ilbo newspaper about his jitters during his first time in the studio since the banishment.
”I am so happy and afraid … I was shaking when I first stood in front of the camera,” said Hong, once a regular late-night talk-show guest who also appeared on the country’s leading children’s programmes.
MBC TV banished Hong from the children’s programme and a radio station cancelled his sitcom contract after he made his sexual orientation public in 2000 during an interview with a monthly women’s magazine.
Hong, one of the most recognisable figures in South Korea because of his shaved head and hyperactive and flamboyant TV roles, soon lost all television roles and no producer would touch him. The first Korean public figure to come out, Hong was bombarded with hate mail.
The new lease of life given to his career was hailed by the Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Federation.
”It’s only right that he has returned to TV. I hope that this will set an example to end discrimination against homosexuals at workplaces,” said Jung, the federation chief.
He said Hong’s coming out gave courage to many gay people to disclose their sexuality.
Members of the federation recently marched through Seoul’s high-fashion avenue with It’s Raining Men playing loudly. A remarkable feature of the rally was that its participants — who until then wore masks at news conferences — showed their faces.
South Korea does not outlaw homosexuality. But the gay rights movement was nonexistent until the mid-1990s, when a few college students began coming out at campus and a small group of homosexuals began networking through websites. — Sapa-AP