Undoing Gender/Sexuality: Framing Teenage Homosexuality in South Korean Print Media 1990-2005

This paper is a transnational feminist analysis of the discourse surrounding teenage homosexuality in South Korean newspapers 1990-2005. When the gender and sexual order is undone while homosexuals are gradually recognized within the imaginary of citizens, the discourse around teenage homosexuality becomes a contested terrain to show the dilemma of citizenship and recognition. While teenage homosexuality was framed as a “foreignÀ or “universalÀ phenomenon by two major competing transnational discourses, the Christian Right and liberal human rights discourse, the local history of South Korean teenagers is hidden and forgotten by the public, and these discourse and the erasure in turn influences the shaping of the teenagers’ experiences. In South Korea, the cost of recognition of homosexuals and their human rights in the discourse surrounding teenage homosexuality involved re-writing the local history of same-sex desire and pleasure to accentuate suffering of homosexual teenagers. By examining competing transnational and local discourses around teenage homosexuality, this paper examines the ways in which a South Korean nation negotiates gendered ways of constituting a proper sexual citizen-subject.

Publisher: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, TBA, New York, New York City, Aug 11, 2007
Year of Publication: 2007