Tag: Seoul

The Seoul Queer Culture Festival will go on as planned this year, but in Seoul’s Euljiro neighborhood:

This year’s Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF) will be held as scheduled on July 1 in downtown Seoul’s Euljiro area due to the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s disapproval of its event taking place at Seoul Plaza, according to the festival organizer, Wednesday.

“The (festival’s) use of Seoul Plaza was disapproved by the discriminatory administration of the Seoul Metropolitan Government,” Yang Sun-woo, chairperson of the SQCF organizing committee, said during a press conference in Seoul, Wednesday. “The 24th SQCF and parade will be held in the Euljiro 2-ga area.”

The SQCF, which was launched in 2000 with around 50 participants in the capital’s northeastern Daehangno area, grew in size over the years, eventually settling in Seoul Plaza in 2015, one of the biggest public squares in the capital. This will be the first edition of the event to not be held there since 2015 except for the two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the city government rejected the committee’s request to use the city square in favor of a youth concert by the Christian Television System (CTS) Culture Foundation instead. 

In response, the committee filed a notice of assembly for the Euljiro area to secure an alternative venue. One month prior to the event, 64 activists and supporters took turns lining up at three police stations in the jurisdiction of the locations for 89 hours to receive police authorization for use of the public space. As permission is granted on a first-come, first-serve basis, they had to compete with Christian activists also lining up to book the same spaces in order to deny them a venue, according to Yang. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

These systems that send out emergency notifications over text message may be more trouble than they are worth:

These images show mobile phone alerts sent out in the wake of North Korea’s launch of what appeared to be a space launch vehicle on May 31, 2023. (Yonhap)

The Seoul city government on Wednesday erroneously sent out an emergency alert advising citizens to prepare for evacuation after North Korea’s launch of what appeared to be a space launch vehicle.

The mobile phone alert was sent to all Seoul citizens at 6:41 a.m., shortly after the Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired what appeared to be a space launch vehicle. But the interior ministry retracted it at 7:03 a.m., saying the alert was sent by mistake.

“We inform that the alert warning issued by the Seoul Metropolitan City at 6:41 a.m. was an erroneous issuance,” the interior ministry said in a separate mobile phone alert.

A ministry official said that Seoul is not an area where an alert has been issued.

The Seoul city government said it was looking into why the alert was set off.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but at least people in Seoul are so desensitized to North Korean missile launches that they did not go into a mass panic like what happened in 2018 when a similar false text message missile alert was issued in Hawaii.

It will be interesting to see what venue they are able to book this year for the SQCF:

A giant rainbow flag is carried aloft by participants at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in Seoul Plaza, central Seoul, June 1, 2019. The event was joined by over 180,000 LGBTQ people and supporters combined. Courtesy of Seoul Queer Culture Festival organizing committee

For an estimated 2.5 million Koreans identifying themselves as sexual minorities, the annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF) is the long-awaited “national queer holiday,” a rare occasion where they feel safe and encouraged to gather and express their identity.

The festival, which celebrates its 24th anniversary this year, started in 2000 with 50 participants on a road in northeastern Seoul’s Daehangno area. The event grew to over 135,000 participants last year, and despite opposition and interference by conservative Christians, it seemed to have nestled at Seoul Plaza, one of the biggest public venues in the capital.

However, the festival now has to find an alternative venue this year, after the Seoul Metropolitan Government earlier this month disapproved the use of the city square for the upcoming festival. 

This two-decade evolution of the SQCF has been a “journey of finding a public space where the country’s LGBTQ communities can be and show who they are,” Yang Sun-woo, the chairperson of the SQCF organizing committee, said during an interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday.

Yang, an activist at the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center, has been taking part in the SQCF since she joined it in 2005 as a staff member of the Korea Queer Film Festival, a part of the SQCF. She has been in her current position since 2015.

Amid opposition from conservative Christians and merchants, the festival had to find one venue after another across the capital ― from Daehangno to Itaewon to Cheonggye Stream to Sinchon ― to house the growing queer community and its supporters, she said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

At least some more parts of the old Yongsan Garrison is being used as a public park. Hopefully this continues instead of just filling in this land with apartments:

A repurposed section of Yongsan Garrison, once the U.S. military’s primary headquarters in South Korea, opened to the public as a park on Thursday during a ceremony convened by South Korean President Yoon.

Over 200 kids and parents attended the grand opening of the Yongsan Children’s Garden, a newly developed 74-acre park in Seoul, according to a news release from the presidential office. 

Yoon at the ceremony praised the park’s construction and said there are “no decent fields in our country where children … can run as much as they want,” according to the release.

The opening ceremony took place on the eve of Children’s Day, a South Korean national holiday.

The park is next to the presidential office and includes a cafe, a walking trail lined with sycamore trees, a baseball field and a soccer field. Its location is meant to “serve as a bridge between the government and the people,” the release said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is absolutely horrible:

An apartment in Seoul’s Nowon district where an apparent murder-suicide involving a family of three occurred is cordoned off by police on May 3, 2023. (Yonhap)

A family of three, including a months-old baby, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in northeastern Seoul on Wednesday, police said.

A 33-year-old-man surnamed Lee, his 37-year-old wife and their baby, believed to be several months old, were found dead by the police at an apartment in the Nowon district at 4:46 a.m.

The woman was found stabbed with a knife inside the apartment, and the bodies of the man and the baby were found outside, the police said, adding officers went there after receiving a call from the man’s father.

The police began an investigation, speculating the man may have killed his wife before jumping off the apartment building with the baby.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Considering the extremely competitive nature of high school education in South Korea it is no surprise that various drugs are sought after to gain an advantage:

A banner in Daechi-dong, Seoul, reads: “Do not drink ‘strange beverages’ handed out to students.” (Choi Jae-hee / The Korea Herald)

On April 3, an appalling scam targeting unsuspecting students on the streets of this neighborhood sent shockwaves across the nation. Over 100 bottles of drinks laced with methamphetamines and ecstasy were distributed, falsely marketed as study aids to enhance concentration and memory.

The scammers even tried to blackmail some of the victims’ parents, threatening to report their children to the authorities for drug use unless they paid up.

Putting aside the audacity of their act, it raises questions: Why did they choose to target Daechi-dong among all the other neighborhoods in Seoul?

The drug-infused drinks were labeled as “Mega ADHD” and handed out to teenage passersby, just like in a street promotional event.

Perhaps what made the young victims less suspicious was that in Daechi-dong, study aids such as prescription medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, caffeine pills and energy drinks are widely used.

Some parents spoke of falsifying symptoms to get access to ADHD prescription drugs, believing they will enhance academic performance. The substance methylphenidate in ADHD medicine can help takers stay awake, energetic and focused.

“Some students are particularly vulnerable to stress before important exams and get easily distracted. Those who have maintained great academic performance would not want to spoil things due to temporary stress, so they resort to taking prescription stimulants,” said Huh, a housewife in her 50s residing in Daechi-dong who has a 17-year-old daughter.

“It is an expedient, but not illegal,” she said, explaining that some parents and students pretend to have or exaggerate ADHD when seeing a doctor.

Data shows the number of teenagers on ADHD pills has been on the rise.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.