Queer Science Fiction in South Korea
It was not until the 1990s that South Korea produced queer sf works that did not associate queerness with any pejorative connotation. With the advent of the internet, online chat rooms and blog sites facilitated the formation of cyber subcultures and enabled like-minded people, including queer folks, to connect to each other. One of the first writers to come out of this era was pseudonymously known as Djuna. The author, whose real name, face, and gender all remain hidden, began publishing their work through online forums starting in 1994. Djuna’s works are still being published and tend to be at the intersection of feminist sf and queer sf. A throughline in Djuna’s work is the exploration and dissection of gender, biological sex, and identity. In “Pentagon” (“P’ent’agon”; 1997), for instance, a deceased male South Korean spy’s brain is split and transplanted into five different host bodies, one of which belongs to a Vietnamese woman [Fig. 6-1]. The revived woman, now a cyborg, subsequently struggles with her implanted memories and runs away from the authorities only to return and confront the police as well as scientists who created her. The short story utilizes a fictional procedure called “the pentagon surgery” to reflect on whether gender is inherent or can be socialized and learned. In “Cello” (“Ch’ello”; 2002), similar themes are explored again through the trope of cyborg but with a more explicit emphasis on queer sexuality. A middle-aged lesbian falls in love with a cyborg that is programmed to behave as a young woman. Reflecting on her own confusion about her feelings, the protagonist ponders the question of whether the cyborg’s womanhood is inherent or simply a programmed function. Applying as they do to cyborgs, aliens, and other figures of the posthuman, Djuna’s stories make the case that gender is not a birthright but rather a performance.
Djuna’s queer feminism has found a growing resonance in recent literary works of science fiction. Jeon Sam-hye’s “Genesis” (“Ch’angsegi”; 2015), for instance, tells the story of Lia, a young astronaut and engineer who is sent to the moon after acting out her love for a female classmate. While on the moon, Lia witnesses the sudden destruction of Earth through a collision with a gigantic meteor. Now a lone survivor of humanity, she decides to write her unrequited love story across the moon, which has been turned into a gigantic billboard for corporations. The story intertwines the theme of lesbian love with a critique of patriarchal and repressive education. Bo-Young Kim’s “How Alike Are We” (“Ŏlmana talmannŭn’ga”; 2017), on the other hand, explores workplace sexism and harassment among the crew of a spaceship [Fig. 6-2]. The protagonist is a computer AI who assumes a female body yet has no gender preconceptions. When the male crew members stage a mutiny, the cyborg aligns itself with the woman captain of the ship in an alliance that symbolizes the unity between queer and feminist struggles. Finally, Yi Chongsan’s Customizer (K’ŏsŭt’ŏmŏ; 2017) joins queer sf with cli-fi. The novel takes place in a future world where people are divided into environmental castes. The heroine is a lower-class young woman, who is given an opportunity to attend an upper-class school, where she falls in love with an intersex classmate. The relationship opens up to her the world of “Customizers,” those who modify their bodies through bioengineering technologies, and “Custophobics,” who are hostile both to the technologies and their users. The novel is in part a representation of South Korean society, which is divided between supporters and opponents of sexual minorities, and in part a thought experiment that celebrates non-normative bodies and sexualities.
Queer sf is also enjoying an increasing presence in visual media. In the 2017 film Okja by Bong Joon-ho, a fictional animal rights organization struggles to rescue a genetically mutated super-pig Okja. Two of the organization’s chief members are homosexual men, in a casting that signals the convergence of queer and environmental movements in contemporary social activism. More recently, Space Sweepers (Sŭngniho), a 2021 film by Jo Sung-hee, follows a group of scavengers who get wrapped up in an intergalactic conspiracy involving a weapon of mass destruction. Among the protagonists is Bubs, a male android who wants to earn enough money to be able to afford her gender-affirming engineering work to present fully as a human woman [Fig. 6-3]. Through this character, the film aligns trans struggles with class conflicts in this space opera that highlights the neoliberal bipolarization of global wealth and its environmental consequences.
Perhaps what makes queerness such a popular theme in South Korean sf today are queer people’s continuous struggles in the country. Korean law does not provide protection against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, and same-sex marriage is still not legally recognized. With queer citizens and organizations pushing for legislative changes and queer celebrities advocating for more media representation, queerness is a heated topic in South Korean politics. Sf writers are advancing this debate through their at times subversive speculative storytelling, and they are thereby contributing to making progressive ideas more digestible to the general public.