Thousands of gay rights supporters yesterday celebrated under a heavy police guard in the South Korean capital as they marked the city’s first Pride parade in three years after a COVID-19 hiatus.
Police were on alert as church-backed counterdemonstrators rallied in nearby streets, highlighting the tensions surrounding the rights of sexual minorities in the deeply conservative country, but there were no significant scuffles or disruptions as of yesterday afternoon.
Revelers wearing or waving rainbow banners cheered during speeches and swayed to music from a stage in front of city hall at the Seoul Queer Parade, which promotes equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.
Photo: AP
Police established perimeters to separate them from conservative Christian protesters, also numbering in the thousands, who held up banners and chanted slogans opposing homosexuality as their leader shouted prayers into a microphone pleading that God “save the Republic of Korea from anti-discrimination legislation.”
Some of those protesters denounced Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon over the city’s unwillingness to block the “lewd” Pride parade.
Gay rights advocates are also unhappy with Oh, who in an interview with a Christian newspaper last week said the city might prohibit the Pride event from using the city hall plaza starting next year if this year’s participants “exhibit indecent materials or overexpose their bodies.”
Thousands of police officers from nearly 60 units were deployed to watch the demonstrators from both sides, said Kim Man-seok, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
Police did not immediately provide a crowd estimate, but had previously forecast a turnout of about 40,000 for the dueling events.
Participants in the Pride parade later planned to march toward Seoul’s main train station, about the same time that counterprotesters were planning to march in nearby streets.
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