“We are everywhere in our community, and we need a community of people who can start sharing out stories and to reach other people who are struggling with the same issues.” – Hyun L.

This oral history is a transcript of a talk by Hyun L., given at KASCON 2006 on 3/24/06.

In 1996, there was an incident that forced myself and a lot of my friends to struggle hard with the issue of “coming out” in our community. Some friends, gay Korean activists, were gay-bashed in Koreatown on 32^nd Street in New York City. They were about four gay guys who were hanging out at a Korean bar or club late at night, dancing, having fun. Afterwards, they were going home, walking on 32^nd Street. They were followed out by a bunch of guys from the club, and they confronted our friends and said “Are you gay?” And they said, “Yes, do you have a problem with that?” And then, they were beat up pretty badly, by a big group of guys, about six to eight guys. After that incident, a couple of them were hospitalized. They called me and some of our friends and we got together to commiserate. They were pretty much in shock, their faces were all bruised up, all drugged up on codeine.

We were talking…all of us had experienced some form of harassment or even violence in our lives, just walking down the street, holding hands with your girlfriend, being name-called, etc. But somehow this one hurt a lot, and felt very very deeply personal to all of us. In the past when we’d experienced it, it was in the East Village or other neighborhoods, in places where we didn’t know anyone. But Koreatown was our community, our people. This was where we went to eat our food and be home and be part of our culture, and the fact that people were pretty badly beaten up just because of who they were, their identity, was something that really shocked all of us. It didn’t surprise us for some reason, but it was a shock, a wake-up call.

We asked “What can we do?” One of the guys who was beat up was a pretty out and very active leader among the gay male community in New York City. If this could happen to us, obviously, it could happen to our entire community. The first thing we thought of was why don’t we turn to Korean community organizations and appeal to them, and say “This happened, and we have to come together and talk about the problem of homophobia and start to change people’s minds in our community about LGBT issues.”

We wanted to write an editorial in the Korean newspapers. We wanted to write it not just by us, but also get signatures from lots of community organizations to support us, put it out in the newspapers and say “Bam, there. We are LGBTs in the Korean community, we are part of the community, and we have lots of support.”

Things didn’t go they way that we thought it would. We approached a lot of organizations that were progressive groups, groups that were about social change and justice in our community. We had a meeting with all of them, and when we talked about this issue and our proposal, a lot of people didn’t really know what to say and were very hesitant. It was very evident there was a lot of fear among community organization leaders about taking a public position in support of LGBTs.

People said a lot of things like “I really sympathize with you and want to support you, but other people in my organization wouldn’t understand it.” Or “Do you think our community is ready for this? They wouldn’t really understand it. I sympathize, but other people wouldn’t.” People also said, “Our organization, we’ve never talked about this issue, people are not educated on this issue, it’s going to take a long time. It’s too sudden for us to take this kind of action.”

We asked them “We understand where you’re coming from, but how do you know that members of your organization aren’t gay or lesbian? How do you know for sure? How do you know that they don’t have family members who are gay or lesbian?” They looked at us, and said “No. That’s impossible! We know our members, and we’re very sure there are no gays, no lesbians in our community.”

So we said “That’s very unfortunate.” I had been active an activists in the Asian community for a long time, and I knew a lot of these folks. A lot of them were friends. We were about social justice and making change and yet when it came to LGBT issues and queer people in our community, it was very clear there was a lot of fear.

So we went back to the drawing board, and decided that this called for drastic measures. We decided we were going to have an all-out public forum in the Korean community, right smack in the middle of Koreatown about LGBT issues. We were gonna publicize it, and invite everyone to come and engage in dialogue with us.

We asked “Where are we gonna do it?” And we said, “Of course we have to do it at the Korean American Association, where else can we do it?” The guy who was beat up, he was still bruised up, he walked right into the Korean American Association, and said “I’m gay, and I was beat up right down the street and we need to have this forum right here, in this office.” He was really persistent and and went back every day for about a week and got the space.

We started advertising for the event. We went every night on 32^nd Street and put up all these flyers at night, inviting folks to come, and the next morning we’d go back and it was all taken down, and the next day we went back and put it all back up. We did this for two weeks leading up to the event.

As we got closer to the event, we came up against a very serious dilemma, which was “Who was gonna speak at this event?” We realized that there was no one who wanted to do it, who could do it. And then it really struck us, what a serious problem this is, this issue of coming out in our community. There were some among us who couldn’t speak because their family was in New York City, and if the media comes, or god fobid, somebody they know comes and sees they speaking, or their family comes…I’m not ready for that. I don’t even know if I can come to this event. And if they worked in in Koreatown and somebody saw them there, they might be fired from their job. There were some folks who had really serious immigration issues and couldn’t be public about their identity in any respect. We were really in a pickle.

What we ended up doing was flying in some of our friends from Chicago. [laughter] “Because your family’s in Chicago, they won’t ever find out about this.” Some of us came from Chicago, and some of us took the very bold step and said, “No one else is gonna do this, somebody has to do it, so we will speak.” There was a team of six of us who spoke at the event.

Leading up to the event, we thought “Is anybody even gonna come to this thing? What if it’s just us and, like, the Korea Times? [laughter] What are we gonna do then?” We were really nervous…I remember the day that we went to the actual event with our flyers and boxes and food and everything…all of us were real giddy and talking about everything else, but really deep inside feeling very, very nervous.

I’ll never forget it, when we walked into the Korean Association and saw, like, 50 people. The room was packed and more people were coming and coming. And a lot of people didn’t want to sign their name and information, but there were so many people, and we thought “Wow, who are all these people?”

A lot of them were folks in our community who we knew and had been struggling all along about whether they could go to this event, struggling with how to be out in our community. A lot of people took really bold steps to come out. A lot of people also saw the flyer and came for the first time off the street, just to see. A lot of people who ended up scolding us at the end, saying “Why did you decide to have an event here? [laughter] Do you know what that does to all of us? It’s such a nerve-wracking experience even to set foot in Koreatown where you’re going to be publicly outed.”

The event was all in all a big success. All of us realized what a big community we have, that we all share this struggle, but that a lot of us are very isolated. It’s unfortunate that it takes an incident of violence to move us into action, but that sometimes that those acts of courage, a few people deciding to organize can be very experience powerful for all of us.

Just to end, I want to tell a very funny anecdote. Somebody signed up on a sign-up sheet, and said “I would really appreciate one of the organizers to call me, because I want to find out more. I want to talk about my personal experience with someone.” So the person who had signed up was a woman, so we decided it’d be better if a woman called. I called and talked to her, and we talked. After three or four minutes, I said, “Your voice is very familiar.” The person on the other line said “Your voice sounds familiar, too.” I said, “I’m so and so, do you know me?” “Oh my goodness. So my real name is…”

She was someone who was also a member of an organization – I had known her for so long – she was a member of the organization whose leader had come to that original meeting and said “There is no way that our members are gay and lesbian people.” I thought it was so ironic that we should meet in this way, and I had known you for how long?

It just goes to show that we are everywhere in our community, and we need a project like Dari, a community of people who can start sharing out stories and to reach other people who are struggling with the same issues.