The profit of queerness: tabloid journalism and the precarious bonds of female homoeroticism in authoritarian South Korea

Abstract

This presentation forms part of a new manuscript entitled The Profit of Queerness. In this book, I reveal the important role that tabloid journalism (in conjunction with medical sciences and police regulations) played in visualizing "problematic" bodies in authoritarian South Korea. In particular, I argue that hetero-normalizing representations of queer (often proletarian) subcultures strategically drew on globalized idioms of "sexual revolution," but used them to entertain bourgeois readers while taming life practices seen as potentially disruptive to the construction and maintenance of a patriarchal and capitalist society. By focusing on the media's commodification of queerness, my work highlights how non-normative sexuality and gender variance were constitutive of (rather than censored from) authoritarian development. To underscore these points, the presentation offers one example of a broad range of queer practices covered by weekly tabloids: female same-sex weddings, an indigenous tradition that became a recurring object of media scrutiny during South Korea's age of dictatorship.

Todd A. Henry (Ph.D., UCLA, 2006; Associate Professor) specialises in modern Korean/East Asian history. Dr. Henry is the author of Assimilating Seoul (UC Press, 2014), and has written several articles on Japanese colonialism in Korea. He is currently working on a transnational study of authoritarian development in South Korea that examines the ideological functions and subcultural dynamics of queerness, especially as they relate to tabloid journalism and medical science, Hot War modes of kinship and citizenship, and globalized discourses and practices of the "sexual revolution." Dr. Henry has received two Fulbright grants and two fellowships from the Korea Foundation. At UCSD, he is an affiliate faculty member of the Program in Critical Gender Studies and the director of the Program in Transnational Korean Studies.

Further Information

Korea Institute E: korea.institute@ anu.edu.au T: 02 6125 4661

This event is presented by ANU Korea Institute ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, and sponsored by ANU Korea Institute and The Academy of Korean Studies. Flyer is attached.