The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

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Lee Jun Ik, the director, said he was focusing on
traditions of behavior, not homosexuality.
By Seokyong Lee for The New York Times
All tame perhaps, but many here consider the movie a taboo-breaker
in its matter-of-fact portrayal of homosexuality.
Popular culture had long ignored gays or, in more
recent years, relegated them to caricatured roles.
“One or two films tried to describe gay relationships in
a serious way, but were unsuccessful commercially,” said
Tcha Sung-Jai, one of the country’s best-known producers
and a professor of film at Dongkuk University.
“That’s why everyone in the industry was so surprised
when ‘King and the Clown’ became a hit.”
“I cried when I saw the movie,” Mr. Tcha added, “and
I’m a very strong heterosexual.”
In addition to homosexuality, other previously taboo subjects,
like human rights violations during South Korea’s
military rule and North Korea-related themes, have been
broached recently in film. Movies have mirrored, and
sometimes tried to stay abreast of, a South Korean society
that has been socially and politically transformed in
the last decade.
Until a decade ago, when a tiny gay rights movement
was started by Korean-Americans on a few college campuses
here, most Koreans had been completely unaware
even of the existence of gays. Even though Seoul has long
had two neighborhoods with small clusters of gay bars,
Itaewon and Chongno, they remained hidden, and homosexuality
went unmentioned.
Then, in 2000, the issue was tossed into the public area
when a well-known television actor, Hong Suk Chon, became
the first major figure to declare his homosexuality.
Mr. Hong was immediately dropped from his show, and
his career appeared over. But in 2003, in a sign of changing
attitudes, the actor began a successful comeback.
“We feel that the last 10 years is the equivalent of a hundred
years because so many changes occurred in such a
short period,” Oh Ga Ram, an official at the Korean Gay
Men’s Human Rights Group, said in an interview in the
organization’s office in Chongno.
No other public figure has come out of the closet, and
most Korean gays remain hidden. But Mr. Oh said “King
and the Clown” was a “positive step” because “there is a
discourse now that did not exist before.”
The discourse, though, was often confused, Mr. Oh said.
Because the love triangle hinges on a feminine male
clown, some viewers say the relationship is not a gay one
at all. “In the minds of many Koreans now, ‘pretty males’
equal gay,” he said.
The movie’s title in Korean is more direct about the nature
of the relationship: “The King’s Man.”
Still, its director, Lee Jun Ik, was hesitant to define his movie
as a gay-themed one and played it down as breaking taboos.
“This is not homosexuality as defined by the West,”
Mr. Lee said in an interview. “It’s very different from
‘Brokeback Mountain.’ In that movie, homosexuality is
fate, not a preference. Here, it’s a practice.”
Mr. Lee said he had been more interested in evoking the
world of itinerant clowns, many of whom were involved
in same-sex relationships.
One person the director consulted was Kim Gi Bok, 77,
who is considered the last surviving itinerant clown. Mr.
Kim was amused at the attention he had gotten because
of the film.
“Before, we were treated as beggars, but now we are
considered traditional artists,” he said in an interview in
Anseong, a town two hours north of Seoul, where a center
to keep alive his craft was established.
Intense relationships developed among itinerant clowns,
Mr. Kim said, because they worked in all-male troupes
and traveled together all the time.
“It was also difficult to get a wife,” he said. “We were beggars.
Who would marry a beggar?”
As in the movie, a masculine clown and a feminine clown
often became a couple. The masculine clown showed his love
by buying his partner, called biri, a watch, Mr. Kim said.
“They would stay together all the time, sleeping in the
same room, helping each other out,” he said. “The biri
would go into people’s kitchens and even beg for food
for both of them.”
“Some of the biris were extremely beautiful – they had
hair down to here,” Mr. Kim said, pointing to his waist,
as his eyes lit up at the memory. He added that some
clowns who did manage to marry would sometimes leave
their wives for fellow clowns.
Mr. Kim himself married and had one son. He said he,
too, had biris during his life, though he said the relations
had not been sexual.
“Relations between men were very sincere and genuine,”
Mr. Kim said. “It was an amazing, remarkable relationship,
much closer than anything between a husband and wife.”
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Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.