They joined Arlene’s and Kenny’s fan clubs. “Article 92-6 must be scrapped.When cute young teenagers Arlene Sullivan and Kenny Rossi slow danced together on “American Bandstand” back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, kids across the country swooned. “It is shameful that this discriminatory and antiquated law is still in effect,” Yoon Ji-hyun, director at Amnesty’s Korean branch, told the Guardian. South Korea has no comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation. The group also said that the law fuels discriminatory attitudes that extend far beyond the barracks. He also noted that soldiers have been charged even when off-duty.Īmnesty International, which recently published a report on the systematic discrimination against LGBTQ people in South Korea’s military as a result of article 92-6, said the law “violates international human rights obligations the South Korean state has signed on to and as well the right to equality before the law safeguarded in the South Korean constitution”.
“Article 92-6 preservationists say the military will suffer damages due to the collapse of military discipline, but it’s difficult to see how same-sex sexual relations under mutual consent inflict such damage,” Kim told the Guardian. This latest case was “undeniable discrimination against sexual minorities,” said Kim Hyung-nam, director at the Center for Military Human Rights Korea.
In 2020, it said in a draft report to the UN committee against torture that the law “only” punishes such indecent acts that “hinder military discipline”. The South Korean government told the UN human rights commission in 2017 that “indecent acts” under article 92-6 did not punish sexual orientation. The court has been asked to review the law again. It acknowledged that while this may lead to discrimination compared with opposite-sex soldiers, such discrimination is reasonable to preserve the army’s combat power. Since 2002, the constitutional court has ruled three times that article 92-6 is constitutional, and has made it clear the law is only relevant to acts between soldiers of the same sex. Politician Yong Hye-in of the Basic Income party recently announced she is seeking to propose a bill to abolish article 92-6, claiming it contradicts the principle of equality under the country’s constitution. There has also been mounting pressure from the United Nations. She was found dead earlier this year.īoth local and international human rights groups have called for article 92-6 to be abolished. The law does not differentiate between whether the act was consensual, off-base, or off-duty.ĭiscriminatory attitudes towards LGBTQ soldiers resurfaced in 2020 when Byun Hee-soo, a staff sergeant, was forcibly discharged after undergoing gender confirmation surgery and being classified as “disabled”. There are also cases of gay soldiers being sent to psychiatric wards. In 2017, article 92-6 was used to indiscriminately monitor and punish gay men in the military, a move human rights campaigners at the time called a “witch-hunt”. President Moon Jae-in – a former human rights lawyer – said prior to becoming president that he was against homosexuality and “did not like it”. While homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea, it remains taboo in a largely conservative society. The defendants’ conduct, it said, “is considered contrary to good sexual morality,” and was “seriously infringing” on the maintenance of military discipline. It interpreted that oral sex, according to the military code, “bordered on rape”. The pair’s lawyer said the act “was consensual” and therefore they were innocent.
By engaging in mutual oral sex, they “molested” one another, the ruling reads. According to an eight-page ruling seen by the Guardian, in December 2020 a soldier entered another’s tent over the course of two nights at a time when they were part of a group isolating due to Covid-19.