研究ノート

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in
Gay Korea
Albert GRAVES

Introduction
Japanophilia and Koreaphilia fueled by mutual desires based on national
imaginaries have been constant fixtures in the gay subcultures of Korea andJapan.1 In recent years, however, the once adored monolith of “Japan” has beenon the decline in gay Korea.2 As of 2023, only one exclusively Japanophilic gay
bar remains in Korea. In contrast, there are around a dozen Koreaphilic gay
bars—often, run by Koreans for Koreans and their Japanese admirers—inTokyo and Osaka. In this research note, I outline the current status of Japanand the Japanese man as imaginaries for Korean gay men, in the aftermath of
Korea’s and Korean men’s transition from subaltern to superior in their own
imaginary against Japan. I examine the factors that have since distanced
Korean gay men from Japan as a result of the seizure of Japan’s soft powerhegemony through the ongoing Korean Wave, a prosperous Korea repositioned
in the gaze of Southeast Asia, and disruptive tides such as the “No Japan”
boycott and COVID-19. The demise of gay bars in Korea targeted at Japanese
tourists is explained through testimony from my interviews with other bar
owners and staff who themselves have or have had ties with, and customers
from, Japan.
Owing to its intraregional scope, this study responds to advocacy for the1

2“Korea,” “Korean,” and “Koreans” in this research note are in reference to the South
Korean nation, culture, or “race” unless otherwise indicated or implied (for example,
when referring to Korea[ns] before the Korean War), while “Koreaphilia” and“Koreaphobia” express sentiments of obsession or animosity toward all things Korean(North or South).
“Japan” and “the Japanese man” are often referred to here, not only as the nation properand the men therein but also as the myriad constructs of such among gay men in Korea.
“Japanophilia” and “Japanophobia” express sentiments of obsession or animosity toward
these or other things associated with Japan.
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研究ノートstudy of Queer Asia as comparatively transregional, global, and inter-Asian,rather than that which is inextricably bounded with the West.3 In doing so, it
disrupts the recurrent narrative of Queer Korea’s inherent desire for whiteWestern men and the West. While researchers such as Patrick Thomsen havecontributed to the study of Korean gay men in an intercultural context, theirsamples are often limited to young, cosmopolitan subjects who communicate
with them in English.4 Focus on such respondents—representative of merely afraction of the community—often skews the racialized hierarchy of desire in
Asia toward the gaze of white Westerners, which is not the case in largely
homogeneous and racially autosexual Korea (or elsewhere, as Lisa Rofel andDredge Kang have argued with respect to China and Thailand).5 For the rest of
the community, a researcher’s positionality of racial otherness can become abarrier of access. The present study, while relying on a modest sample size,
turns to this broader group through my racial “privilege” and fieldsites whichchiefly cater to a local (as opposed to foreign, Anglophone) clientele base.
My research sets out to advance area and queer studies from transnational
and intersectional angles, along “ethnosexual frontiers” termed by Joane Nagel.6
It discursively looks at Korean gay men not by nativist or global queer
assertions, but as a group with an intraregional relationality with Japan. As a
Korean-American, my own positionality in this dual relationship was conflicted.
On the one hand, I was accepted as a gyopo7—a member of the diaspora—and,to a degree, respected for my origination in the US as opposed to the criminallyassociated China, Russia, or Central Asia. As an American gyopo, I establishedtrust from those who otherwise avoid contact with “foreigners.” On the other
hand, my foreign way of thinking and communicating can impede that trust,

3
4

5

6
7

254

Howard Chiang and Alvin Wong, “Asia is burning: Queer Asia as critique,” Culture,
Theory and Critique 58, no. 2 (2017): 123.
Patrick Thomsen, “Transnational Interest Convergence and Global Korea at the Edge ofRace and Queer Experiences: A Talanoa with Gay Men in Seoul,” Du Bois Review 17, no. 2(2020): 411-428.
Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2007), and Dredge Kang, “Eastern orientations: Thai middle-classgay desire for ‘white Asians’,” Culture, Theory and Critique 58, no. 2 (2017): 182-208.
Joane Nagel, “Ethnicity and Sexuality,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 107-133.
Korean transliterations in this research note are in accordance with the system ofRevised Romanization rather than what I consider to be an outdated (and convoluted tomany outside academia) McCune-Reischauer.

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

barring me from the typical bargoing groups (moim) in which some exclusively
take part in the scene. Consequently, only individuals—as bar owners, staff, orlone customers—became interviewees for this study.
While fieldwork for this study was limited to Seoul and Busan, gayborhoods
exist in all of the five metropolitan cities while other cities without one havegay bars nonetheless.8 Gay men in outlying regional, provincial, and rural spaces
are no less representative of the gay community in Korea; and bars, too, areonly one example of gay space amid the 500 to 600 establishments that include
clubs, theaters, karaoke rooms, cruising spaces, and others. Furthermore, muchas with scholarship on gay men in Japan, this research note cannot extend its
conclusions to lesbians and other sexual minorities—often segregated in the bar
scene, consequently and by choice. Lastly, although the study of Korean gay
men in Japan includes the North Korean diaspora, such access is almost
impossible in South Korea. Zainichi North Koreans are born and raised in Japan,
whereas North Koreans in South Korea are predominantly defectors, only oneof whom is publicly known to have come out as gay and has since relocated to
the US.9

Methodology
In preparation for fieldwork, online searches were conducted to locate gay
bars in Korea that advertise to, or have been reviewed by or with reference to,
Japanese. Sources included homepages and social media (Facebook andInstagram) managed by the establishments, along with directories in Japanese(Gaytobu and Gclick) and English (Kiss My Kimchi and TravelGay). Based on
the content available, datasets were compiled on owners; customer base by age
and body type; limitations to foreigners and women; and other descriptions,89“Gayborhood” in this research note means any area—which, in Korea, is almost always
identified by neighborhood (dong)—with a cluster of gay establishments. No area is
exclusively gay (indeed, straights who come to them may not even be aware of this coexistence), and the purpose they serve is for play—not as places to live and work as acommunity. As such, they should not be conflated with gayborhoods in, for example, theUS and Canada.
For more on this gay defector, see the article that brought his story to light in Hankyoreh(April 16, 2015).
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研究ノートincluding features of the interior such as karaoke.10 Ten establishments wereshortlisted as fieldsites, four of which were later found to have gone out ofbusiness and were subsequently replaced during the course of fieldwork. The
study relies on my findings from these resulting ten gay bars distributed acrossfour gayborhoods in Seoul and Busan: Seoul’s Jongno 3-Ga (2), Itaewon (2), andSillim (1); and Busan’s Beomil (5).
Gay bars have often been bypassed as fieldsites for the study of gay spaceand place in Korea, and the few exceptions have looked at them solely from theperspective of their customers. A survey in the 1990s managed to measure asizeable sample of Korean gay bargoers’ involvement in queer culture andsecrecy around sexual identity, in a study by Chris and Berry.11 However, its
distribution was confined to Seoul’s international or “Westernized” district ofItaewon, thereby limiting respondents to the same highly educated, globallyminded demographic that pervaded the study by Thomsen. My choice ofinterviews over a survey for the present study is partly the result of limitedaccess to—and, thus, sample size of—customers. Business at the bars at thetime of fieldwork was slow as many headed directly to the clubs, which had
only days before reopened after months of closure due to COVID-19. Even
when the bars are busy, the majority of customers assemble in their own social
circles which rarely interact with one another, let alone a random stranger.
Conducting surveys requires intrusions into each of these personal zones, which
can put the surveyor’s welcome at the bar and ability to conduct interviews at
risk. There is warranted suspicion toward researchers at gay bars in Korea,
where the research aim has often been to pry into the sexual lives of gay men.12
The subjects of focus for my interviews were correspondingly owners andstaff rather than customers. As gatekeepers of the gayborhood, they haveexclusive insights on not only their own bars and customers but also othersaround them—past and present, making them archivists of a history that10

Explicit refusal of entry to foreigners and women is not as common for gay bars in
Korea as they are in Japan, and as such no such rules were indicated by or for any inthis study.
11 Chris Berry and Fran Martin, “Syncretism and Synchronicity: Queer’n’Asian Cyberspacein
1990s Taiwan and Korea,” in Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, ed. Chris Berry,Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue (Duke University Press, 2003), 87-114.
12 Berry and Martin, “Syncretism and Synchronicity,” 112.
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Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

beyond their memory fades with the passing of each night. They further chart
the direction of the gayborhood’s constant redevelopment in the ways theychoose to represent their bars, interact with their customers, and respond tochange. In their role of conversing with customers, owners and staff become
informants by default when the researcher takes on the role of a customer.
While I did manage to talk with isolated customers at a few bars intermittently
with my interviewees, these conversations were often integrated into thediscussion with owners and staff and rather served to support or expand on
their responses. Participant observation and interviews enabled me to extract
thicker descriptions from and about my subjects, interrogate new questions
along the way, and, consequently, obtain broader context for my findings.

In total, 13 interviewees working as owners (9) and staff (4) were interviewed
over the course of several nights in November 2021. Conversations were in
Korean or Japanese, as preferred by the respondent. Six out of the ten bars inthe study had owners—two of which additionally had staff—who could speak
Japanese, an ability which is directly related to their exposure to (but, notnecessarily, love for) Japan. The presence of these owners and staff serves as afurther indicator that their bars have been regularly patronized by Japanesecustomers, who as tourists normally do not speak Korean or English. As bars
were preselected on the basis of their marketing toward, or commentary from257

研究ノートor about, Japanese, all of those still in business expectably had owners and staff
conversant in Japanese. What was, perhaps, less expected was that none of thebars outside this preselection had anyone who knew Japanese. As no other bars
in my search advertised by or for Japanese, this suggests with high probability
that the absence of Japanese ability—and, accordingly, close contact with Japanand Japanese customers—is also the case for the majority of the 150 or so gay
bars across Korea.

Case Study
Today, Japanese men are nowhere to be found in the gay bars of Seoul or
Busan. Japan, now commonly associated with the socially and culturally
outdated, along with the Japanese man as an object of desire, seem to havediminished in the imaginary of gay men in Korea. Just as soon as Korea started
to officially open to the flow of Japanese cultural content, the Korean wave
flooded out in the opposite direction and has yet to subside. There is now what
I see as an increasing “Japanlessness”—in the loosening of, and disintegration
from, Japan—in gay Korea, triggered by three ongoing factors: (1) Japan’s
declining soft power against the global rise of Korean pop culture andKoreaphilia—and, consequently, a new autosexual desire of self-seeking Koreans;(2) Korea’s demographic transition that has discarded the need for safe haven—with Korean gay men’s complacency in what I consider to have become an“open closet”—and established a class of gay tourists to emerging markets inSoutheast Asia; and, (3) Korean gay bars’ loss of Japanophiles amid the “NoJapan” boycott and dearth of Japanese tourists due to COVID-19.

Falling Japan, Rising Korea
On the surface, Koreans and Japanese in recent years may seem to share amutual disdain, their nations deadlocked at one of the lowest points in recent
memory. Since 2013, annually conducted joint surveys have successively
confirmed that these sentiments are indeed represented by the majority in
Korea and Japan, even if directed at the other’s government more so than its
people.13 Still, a series of diplomatic spats sparked by recurrent disputes over13

258

Yasushi Kudo, “Nichikan no kokumin kanjō wa yaya ochitsuita ga, izen hiekonda jōkyō: ryōkoku
no hēsoku jōtai ni kaizen no kizashi wa mirareru ka,” The Genron NPO (September 28, 2021).

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

history, territory, and trade have only fanned the incessant flames ofJapanophobia in Korea and Koreaphobia in Japan (including against zainichi as“the enemy” at home). While outright racism and hate speech against Japaneseare relatively rare outside the extremist fringe in Korea, for the rest of society
there is at best a sense of lost love with Japan. As for the respective minorities
who hold favorable impressions of the other, what attracts them is not
irrelevant. The joint surveyors found that over half of Japanese who view Korea
favorably are influenced by its pop culture. The draw to Japan for Koreans, on
the other hand, is its tourist attractions; but, while over half of Koreansexpressed a desire to travel to Japan, it is predominantly the younger
demographic below 30. The other half, then, represent a broadly aged range ofadults—including those who lived through the decades of Japan’s postcolonial“presence”—not a few of whom have probably already traveled to, but havebecome blasé toward, Japan. This multigenerational shift away from Japan isthus what I consider to be a result of its fading presence as a pop cultural
hegemony in Asia, as replaced at home by the Korea Wave. By extension, thishas also meant Japan’s dissipation from the fixations of gay men in Korea.
Where state censorship of Japanese media had fallen short in its aim toconstruct a new Korean consciousness to replace all that had been erased bycolonization, the Korean Wave seems to have made leaps and bounds. Korea’s
brand identity is stronger than ever, reaching every corner of the world, no lessin a Korea that nonetheless maintains a constant inflow of cultural content fromJapan. Japanese gay manga are now translated into Korean, and other series
inspired by them are authored by Koreans and made available on online
platforms such as “Kkaman Bongji” (“Black Bag”). While the site featured over
50 adult series and 80 fan submissions by the end of 2021, hardly any content
was newly produced that year and the lull in activity has continued into 2022.
Meanwhile, the once booming Japanese music industry had already lost its
luster for Koreans in the 2000s, and has never managed to reclaim its position
since. With the industry’s myopic focus on a domestic fan base (coupled with its
own form of self-censorship through copyright restrictions), Japanese idols canno longer meet the standards of the mainstream audience in Korea. Those withthe talent instead try to break into the Korean Wave, where some of the mostsuccessful boy bands such as NCT and girl groups such as TWICE haveJapanese and other Asian members for broader marketability across the region.

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研究ノートThe success of Korea’s music industry has hoisted an army of Korean (orKoreanized) men and women onto sexual pedestals one after the other for new,
Koreaphilic audiences in Japan and around the world. Bar H’s bartender was
keenly aware of this phenomenon, saying that while Koreans once looked up to
Japan and its trends, the roles have since switched (Resp. 11).
Bar E’s owner went further in his assessment, saying that while Japan andJapanese men were once subjects of infatuation, Korean gay men’s tastes havesince broadened beyond them (Resp. 7). Even Bar D’s owner, described by his
staff as a Japanophile (Resp. 6), was less turned on by Japanese men. He
characterized them as typically thin, in what seemed to be a generalization
based on an abundance of “herbivore men” (sōshoku-kei danshi) since the 2000s.
Korean men, in contrast, are often muscular because of their tendency to workout (Resp. 5), with others aside from my interviewees in this study having
attributed Koreans’ build to their mandatory service in the military. Withmuscles above thinness on the hierarchy of gay desire, these comparisons carryan implicit bias by Korean gay men for other Koreans over Japanese.
A sense of Korean gay men’s tastes can also be found in print media such as
posters at the bars. Common ones at my fieldsites came from the Ivan Stop
HIV/AIDS Project (ISHAP), promoting safer sex between gay men. Character
illustrations seemed overtly Japanese in their resemblance to those in gay
manga, with husky bears and cubs with buzz cuts and stubble beards. Whilethese types abound in Japan they are less popular in Korea, due to stigmas
against body fat and facial hair. Yet, the scruffy men depicted on these posters
sparked no connection to Japan or Japanese men for any of my respondents.
Many of those with whom I communicated in Japanese coincidentally fit thedescription themselves, but none associated their look with Japaneseness. It was
purported to be a type found across Asia (Resp. 2) or even one which isinherently Korean (Resp. 5). The only respondent who consciously self-identified
with Japaneseness was the owner of Bar I, who boasted that he took inspirationfrom the iconic “goggle man” (goguruman) in Japanese gay porn (Resp. 12)—arecurring role normally played by an average [yet, still, “masculine”] man in his
30s or 40s who seduces the toned, athletic [and, often, straight] protagonist in
his 20s. In all of my other discussions, Japanese men were not imagined as thefigures of masculinity they once were in gay Korea.
Be it for goggle men or otherwise, the porn industry may be the one

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Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

exception where Japanese content has maintained a semblance of gay desire forJapan in Korea. The blanket prohibition of porn has resulted in a sparsity of
locally produced, commercially available content in Korea, and racial insularity
in sexual preferences among gay men leave them with few alternatives besides
what comes out of Japan.14 Korean gay men’s consumption of Japanese porn isthus largely a consequence of ample supply for a racialized demand. In thisway, porn from Japan, as with Taiwan and [illegally] China, is consumed not somuch for their subjects as Japanese or Taiwanese/Chinese as it is for them as[East] “Asians” (dongyangin). This has been observed in the Korean terms
commonly entered in search of amateur or “DIY” gay porn on Tumblr, which—until its ban on adult content in 2018—indicated a strong demand for nationally“domestic” (guknae or guksan) content in addition to that which was racially“Asian.”15 This desire for Korean gay porn is not limited to Koreans, with asurge in searches from other regions on other platforms as further testament to
the global rise of the Korean man as a sexual object. In 2017, “Korean” launched
57 ranks to become the second most searched term on Pornhub Gay, further
moving on to overtake “Japanese” in first place in 2018 and 2019. This is not
only a reflection of tastes in the West, as Pornhub’s annual Year in Review
indicates that “Korean” has also trended in searches for straight porn in Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, and Kyrgyzstan.16 While this may prove to
be a passing phase contingent on the durability of the Korean Wave, there is no
denying that Korean men have stolen much of the limelight from theircounterparts in Japan, at home and abroad. With fewer sexual objects in Japanto sustain the gay gaze of Koreans, Japan as much as its men can only berelegated to the periphery of their desire.

Open Closet, New Horizons
In 1980, Korean workers had less than a quarter of the capital of theircounterparts in Japan. Since then, however, IMF data shows that Korea’s GDP
growth rate has consistently outpaced Japan’s; and, per capita, Korea has

14

Shawn Jones, “Jemok eopseum: the repurposing of Tumblr for gay South Korean DIY
pornography,” Porn Studies 7, no. 3 (2020): 309.
15 Jones, “Jemok eopseum,” 311.
16 While “Japan,” too, has represented a sizeable share of these searches, they have almost
exclusively been made from locations in Japan.
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研究ノートalready surpassed Japan as of 2018. With this turning of the tide, Korean gay
men find themselves in a reversed role, not only emboldened by the soft powerof their pop culture but also enabled with purchasing power as members of a
new cosmopolitan class in Asia. Coupled with demographic transition, gay
men’s need for safe haven abroad hardly has much basis anymore. With
marriages at 65 percent and births at only 25 percent of what they were in
1970, Korean society and its expectations have been overhauled to where
spouseless, childless lifestyles are no longer an anomaly.17 Meanwhile, pride
events branded as “queer culture festivals” and ranking among the largest in
Asia have inundated the streets of Seoul, Busan, and over half a dozen other
cities across the nation since 2000, forcing society to come to terms with theexistence of sexual minorities and heralding a slow but sure incline in theiracceptance. The doors to the national closet have been flung open, and walking
in and out of it—with plenty of trendy outfits to choose from—is now the norm
for the majority of gay men in Korea. This “open closet,” as I see it, is a liminal
space between confinement and liberation where the majority of Korean gay
men now find themselves, as newly cosmopolitan subjects. They are better
educated, richer, and more traveled than ever before, with obscured boundaries
in their gay lives at home and the resources for self-development that is wholly
independent from the push and pull of Japan.  
Since the turn of the century, one conspicuous move has been theintraregional pivot by Korea and Koreans toward Southeast Asia. In a bid todeepen its strategic partnership with ASEAN, Korea concluded an FTA in2007, established a diplomatic mission in 2012, and dedicated a year of cultural
exchange in 2017. In 2020, Korea invested more in ASEAN than in any othernation or region besides the US, and travel by Koreans to ASEAN member
states in the preceding year hit a record of over 10 million—twice as many as
to Japan.18 Japan as a safe haven in the imaginary of Korean gay men is now all
but a distant memory. Today’s Koreans are no longer gay migrants or refugees
but gay tourists, choosing sexually liberal destinations southward to which they
enjoy easy access with visa-free entry and an expansive selection of direct
17

18
262

Statistics Korea, “Marriage and Divorce Statistics in 2021,” Ministry of Economy and
Finance (March 17, 2022), and Statistics Korea, “Preliminary Results of Birth and Death
Statistics in 2021,” Ministry of Economy and Finance (February 23, 2022).
ASEAN-Korea Centre, “2021 ASEAN & Korea in Figures” (March 3, 2022), xvi.

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

connections serviced by a range of budget airlines.
While beach resorts in Vietnam and the Philippines have become typicalgetaways for others, gay men often head to the clubs and bars of Thailand and[albeit on the outskirts of Southeast Asia] Taiwan. A Taiwanese pride flag hungas a symbol of solidarity at Bar H. Bar C’s bartender said that he had been to
Japan, China, and Taiwan, but preferred Taiwan and wanted to see Thailand
next—both for their tourist attractions and gay scenes (Resp. 4). Although their
desire rarely extends to the men there (Resp. 4, 9, & 11—indeed, there is often
hostility toward them, sexual racisms behind which deserve a study of theirown), Korean gay men are forging intimate ties to these places, looking to themfor not only respite but also retirement.19 Even gay English instructors in Korea
have started to relocate to Southeast Asia since the start of COVID-19,
according to the owner of Bar D (Resp. 5). With the simultaneous decline ofJapanese gayborhoods such as Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ni-Chōme—which had alreadylost a third of its over 300 bars by 2010 due to gentrification and dating apps,
not to mention how it will have fared by the end of the ongoing pandemic—
Japan’s image to Koreans as a gay getaway may soon be on the way out.20‘No Japan’, No Japanese Men
In an IVANCITY poll in December 2007 with over 1,730 respondents, Tokyo
was voted as the city Korean gay men most wanted to experience living in,
only behind New York. Comments were directed less at the city than at theJapanese, with praise for what commenters characterized as their kindness,manners, nonconformism, and “gayishness” of even the straight men. A decade
later on the portal from July 2018 to June 2019, Japan was the second mosttalked about overseas travel destination. Korea, along with others in Asia suchas China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong had become the source of record numbers of
tourists to Japan annually for the preceding several years due to relaxed visa

19

20John Cho, “The Three Faces of South Korea’s Male Homosexuality: Pogal, Iban, andNeoliberal Gay,” in Queer Korea, ed. Todd Henry (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020),
158.
While this decline was reported in an article in Japan Times (February 24, 2010), a more
recent article in Reuters (December 3, 2020) that mentions a figure of 400 bars suggeststhat Ni-Chōme may have since made a comeback.
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研究ノートrequirements and a steeply plummeting yen.21 In July 2019, however, the figuresfrom Korea took a nosedive at the onset of a sudden movement that swept thenation, phrased succinctly as “No Japan” with the slogan, “[We] Do Not Go, [We]Do Not Buy” (Gaji Ansseumnida, Saji Ansseumnida). The fervor was kindled by
Japan’s removal of Korea from its white list of preferential trading partners
shortly after a Korean ruling demanded compensation from Japanese firms forforced labor. The movement—in which Koreans pledged not to travel to, or buy
products made in, Japan—had no adverse impact on incoming tourism fromJapan. On the contrary, Japanese travelers to Korea kept a steady annual
incline since 2015, nearly doubling as they surpassed 3 million in 2019.22 With afew exceptions, Korean businesses including gay bars went on welcoming themas customers, excluding Japanese from their hostilities toward Japan (Resp. 11).
However, consumers were quick to shun businesses perceived as Japanese,even when many were owned and run by Koreans. Restaurants and bars werea common target, directly and indirectly. Beer was the hardest hit ofcommodities, Japanese imports of which halved by the end of 2019 and wereslashed by a further 85 percent in 2020. In the span of only a few years,
Japanese beer imports to Korea plummeted from USD 78 million in 2018 to
USD 4 million as of August 2021; and, with its sustained decline, there is no
signal that demand will recover anytime soon.23 While Japanese beer was notnecessarily even on the menu at the few remaining Japanophilic gay bars in
Jongno 3-Ga, these figures serve to illuminate the extent to which the public
could so swiftly and drastically lose its desire to consume “Japan”—including its
commodities which had never before been considered a threat.24 Even if only bycollateral damage, Korea’s already dwindling “Japanese” gay bars began toquietly shutter in the aftermath of destruction, as further attested to in myinterviews (Resp. 5).
21

Japan National Tourism Organization, “Nenbetsu kuni/chīki-goto no hōnichi gaikyakusū nosuī,” Japan Tourism Agency (June 17, 2022).
22 Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, “2020 Oerae Gwangwanggaek Josa: International
Visitor Survey,” Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (August 19, 2020).
23 Korea Customs Service, “Wain, maekju jechigo juryu suip 1-wi chaji,” Ministry of Economy
and Finance (August 30, 2021).
24 Seung-Mi Han, “Consuming the modern: Globalization, things Japanese, and the politics
of cultural identity in Korea,” in Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence inAsia, Europe, and America, eds. Harumi Befu and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (London:
Routledge, 2001), 205.
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Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

There are also indicators of a spike in Japanophobia among Korean gay men
as a result of “No Japan.” Over the two and a half years and counting since its
start—which, for some, has yet to end—user posts about Japan in a travel
forum on IVANCITY have shrunk by 90 percent, replaced by discussions
around Thailand, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.

One user post from August 2019 with the header, “Are there still soullessgays taking trips to Japan?” (Ajikdo ilbon yeohaeng ganeun yeonghon eomneun
geideuri gyesineun ga.) sparked a heated argument over historical and politicalissues beyond the those related to the trade dispute. Those who responded indefense of Japan or in opposition to “No Japan” were far outnumbered by those
who sympathized with the stance of the OP. The exchange demonstrates thatwhile there are still Korean gay men with a keen interest in Japan, they are theoutlier; and, while recent expressions of Japanophobia may have been inducedby this trade dispute, the deeply ingrained sentiments behind them will not
subside merely with the end of it or others to come.
Only several months after the flare up of “No Japan,” COVID-19 struck theworld with travel bans around the world and between Korea and Japan. Closed
borders and social distancing rules have strained businesses across the board;but, they were the last blow to any Japanophilic bars still standing in Jongno
3-Ga, such as HANABI Episode 2 (Resp. 3). As these bars had almost exclusively
consisted of tourists and regulars in their 50s and 60s, it is unlikely they will265

研究ノートever be replaced in the absence of a new “Japanese Wave.” Others that had
once regularly been patronized by Japanese tourists before COVID-19—such as
Bars A, B, D, G, H, and I—were savvy enough to have built from the start acustomer base that did not rely on them, which has saved them from the fate ofpeers that staked everything on the permanence of Japan’s presence in Korea.

Conclusion
While gay Korea may be the closest it has ever been to the threshold ofJapanlessness, it will never reach a stage where it is completely devoid ofJapan. At the same time, it is highly improbable that Japan will ever return tothe peak of its influence over gay Korea. In moving their relationship forward
as equals, this could surely be for the better. In the meantime, as I try toconstrue this relationship, Japan can best be labeled with what it means in theimaginary of Korean gay men today—a role I would lightly term sseomnara.
Geopolitically, Japan is often characterized as an “island nation” (seomnara).
Sseom, on the other hand, is slang for an ambiguous relationship between two
people where there seems to be “something.” That there is still this something
between Korean gay men and Japan is perhaps a more constructive way tosummarize the rise and fall of Japan than with “Japanlessness.”
The ambiguity of this relationship on the path ahead also demands further
research into questions that could not be properly covered in this study.
Transnational studies of Queer Asia duly require an inward look at the
intraregional and interregional dimensions at play. For this study, it means
honing in on alternatively organized subgroups of the gay community, todetermine the axes of tension they have with one another in assembling anddismantling the national boundary of gay space in Korea. With the diminishmentof Japan (and, I would also argue, the West) in gay Korea, a new interwoven
fabric of regionalisms—area-based representations of gay identity—pervades
the bar scene and beckons as the next topic for study on gay space and place in
Korea. Korean gay men are reinventing spatial identities by cities, districts, andneighborhoods, and fracturing the boundaries of center and periphery that couldchange the dynamic altogether with Japan.
For now, with no more gay bars relying on them, Japanese men searching forthe spotlight will in any case not find it shining over them when they return to266

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

Korea. As Japanese tourists start to trickle back into their once acquainted
gayborhoods in Seoul and Busan, they will find themselves in a new space
without a clear sense of place. Much rarer will it be for one to hear enka being
sung on the karaoke as there was at Goguma, or to see Koreans sitting in wait
for Japanese as there were at HANABI Episode 2, in contrast to what was once
upon a time reported on Gclick. In its increasing Japanlessness, Korea’s gay bar
scene becomes ever more inward-looking, self-seeking, and reflective of a gay
community which is diversifying within its own localized context.
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研究ノートEconomy and Finance, February 23, 2022.
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Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in Gay Korea

Abstract

Out with the Old: ‘Japanlessness’ in
Gay Korea
Albert GRAVESJapanophilia and Koreaphilia fueled by mutual desires based on national
imaginaries have been constant fixtures in the gay subcultures of Korea andJapan. In recent years, however, the once adored monolith of “Japan” has beenon the decline in gay Korea. As of 2023, only one exclusively Japanophilic gay
bar remains in Korea while around a dozen Koreaphilic gay bars—often, run by
Koreans for Koreans and their Japanese admirers—can be found in Tokyo andOsaka. Japanese characteristics and customs are fading away from the gay
scenes of Seoul and Busan, yet the story of their origin has remained obscure.
Japan, along with the Japanese man, have been peripheralized in the
consciousness and desires of gay men in Korea. With gay issues andJapanophilia as taboo topics in a relatively conservative, nationalistic Korea,
scholarly discourse on the subject altogether is almost nonexistent. This
research note presents findings in support of the researcher’s theory that
Korean gay space is founded in an early intimacy with Japan. The case study—
based on interviews conducted with the owners and staff of ten gay bars inSeoul and Busan—outlines the current status of Japan and the Japanese man as
imaginaries for Korean gay men, in the aftermath of Korea’s and Korean men’stransition from subaltern to superior in their own imaginary against Japan. It
examines the factors that have since distanced Korean gay men from Japan asa result of the seizure of Japan’s soft power hegemony through the ongoing
Korean Wave, a prosperous Korea repositioned in the gaze of Southeast Asia,and disruptive tides such as the “No Japan” boycott and COVID-19. With its
binary focus, the study aims to relocate the discussion of Queer Korea into
Queer Asia, taking it beyond the confines of its relationship with the West.
Owing to its intraregional scope, this research note responds to advocacy forthe study of Queer Asia as comparatively transregional, global, and inter-Asian,rather than that which is inextricably bounded with the West. In doing so, it
disrupts the recurrent narrative of Queer Korea’s inherent desire for white269

研究ノートWestern men and the West. Advancing queer studies from transnational andintersectional angles, it discursively looks at Korean gay men not by nativist or
global queer assertions, but as a group with an intraregional relationality withJapan.

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