Though Huso Yi may not have the name recognition of queer Koreans like Harisu or Hong Seok Cheon, this academic's work and life story helps fill in our picture of queer life in Korea. While currently a professor, he was a student activist at Yonsei University during the burgeoning gay rights movement in the 1990s. From the start of an essay series titled Life and Death of Queer Koreaat The Gully:
I remember very clearly the first time my cell phone rang late at night on the Spring of 1995. I answered it and a male voice hissed in my ear, "Go burn in hell!" The next night, another anonymous phone voice spat, "I'm gonna kill you."
Almost every night for a year my cell phone was bombarded with hateful, threatening voices. I had done something terrible and dirty. I had become a public homosexual, co-founding Come Together, South Korea's first queer student activist group.
His essays are a great read analyzing queer Korea from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s through religion, politics, culture, and rigid gender roles. It would be interesting to see an update on these essays; while some of the arguments on perceived incompatibilities between homosexuality and Korean culture still hold true, Korea has surely improved and queerness has begun to enter cultural consciousness. As his essays are not the easiest to find, I've included them below.
After getting his Bachelor degree in Psychology at Yonsei, he moved to the US for a while. He got his doctorate in Health Studies specializing in Human Sexuality at NYU and also has an MS degree. He now works as an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Check out their website to read a mini-bio of his academic achievements.
Huso Yi has quite the number of publications. While some of these looked Korea and homosexuality, recently they have focused on HIV/AIDS in China, South Africa, the US and Vietnam and its prevalence among men who have sex with men, sex workers, the homeless and drug users.
Perhaps the most pertinent for the queer rights movement in Korea, Huso Yi helped create the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center, which is one of the organizations based in Seoul that fights for queer rights. Although he now seems to be focusing on the more academic side of his career, perhaps his activist side will come back again in the future...
