Seoul’s city government has effectively blocked South Korea’s largest annual LGBT festival from taking place outside city hall this year after granting a permit for a Christian youth concert instead, the LGBT event’s organizers said this week.
Clashes over the Seoul Queer Culture Festival have become a yearly symbol of the battle for LGBT rights in a country where same-sex marriage is not recognized and efforts to pass anti-discrimination laws face strong resistance from conservative religious groups and others.
As in several past years, the festival’s organizers jockeyed with religious groups in seeking permission to hold events in downtown Seoul on July 1. Since 2015, the event has been held in front of the city hall, except for 2020 and 2021, when COVID-19 pandemic rules prevented any gatherings.
Photo: Reuters
Yang Sun-woo, chief organizer of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, said the city’s move is an act of discrimination.
“Each year, we struggle to secure a venue to hold the event,” she said.
A concert for young people is scheduled to take place outside the city hall on that day instead.
That event is being hosted by the CTS Cultural Foundation, an organization linked to local Christian broadcaster CTS, which has vocally opposed homosexuality and the festival.
A representative for the CTS Cultural Foundation said that the timing was not aimed at blocking the LGBT festival.
The organizing bodies for both events had requested to use the space on the same day. The decision was made by a citizen council, which includes some members of the city council.
The LGBT festival has since 2015 drawn thousands of attendees to downtown Seoul each summer, supported by human rights groups, university clubs and foreign embassies. It routinely draws protests, and a police presence is often heavy.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
IN PROTECTION: Video released by the Senate showed Ronald dela Rosa being chased through the halls of the upper chamber, pursued by National Bureau of Investigation officers Philippine authorities on Monday said that they would not arrest for now a lawmaker wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, capping a lengthy Senate standoff. Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who served as police chief and Duterte’s top enforcer during the bloody drug crackdown, would be treated as if in the custody of the Senate, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag told reporters after the politician had taken refuge in the legislative building. “We respect that they are a co-equal branch,” Matibag said after the Senate refused
RSS