Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses

For more than 70 years, South Korea has woven the threat of North Korea into daily life. But now that threat has become mundane, and South Korean national security addresses family, public health, and national unity. As a result, queer Koreans have become a target as their bodies are thought to harbor deadly viruses and are thus seen as carriers of death. What does it mean to be perceived as a national threat simply based on who you would like or not like to sleep with? These days, national security in South Korea includes not only war and the military, but the family, public health, and national unity. The prevailing narrative in South Korea already sees being queer as a threat to traditional family and marriage. By claiming that queer Koreans disrupt military readiness and unit cohesion, that threat is extended to the entire population. The solutions to these threats all end up looking the same: queers become targets of a routinized national security.

In their desire to be seen as citizens who support the safety and security of the nation, queer Koreans placate a patriarchal and national authority that is responsible for their continued marginalization. At the same time, they are also creating spaces to protect themselves from the security measures and technologies directed against them. Taking readers from police stations and the galleries of the Constitutional Court to queer activist offices and pride festivals, Banal Security explores how queer Koreans participate in their own securitization; how security weaves through daily life in ways that oppress queer Koreans, and highlights the work of queer activists to address that oppression. In doing so, they challenge not only the contours of national security in South Korea, but global forms and entanglements of security.