[Cover Story ‘Military’ #3]

Military, Coming Out, Successfully — Hiding and Revealing as a Young Man in the South Korean Armed Forces

Hello. I’m a gay man currently running a blog for LGBTQ people under the nickname “HaGaDa” on one of Korea’s major portal sites. As the title suggests, I was discharged just a few months ago, so I’m still a fresh young guy with some of the military in me. Right now, I’m also in the middle of an overseas training program. One day, I received a cautious message: “We’re putting together a newsletter on the theme of the military for Armed Forces Day—would you be able to contribute a piece?” I hesitated. I don’t have much free time here, and the people I’m living with don’t know about me, so I worried it would be difficult to write and edit something. In that moment, I remembered two comments that had been left on a post I uploaded while I was on leave.

Both commenters were “mothers with children.” One wrote, “There are gays even in the military—how can I send my son there without feeling anxious?” The other replied, “This is a post about someone serving in the military in a healthy and exemplary way as a young man of the Republic of Korea. That kind of comment isn’t appropriate.” I’m not anyone remarkable. It would be close to impossible for me to write a guidebook for LGBTQ people in the military, or to write something that every single LGBTQ person would relate to. What I want, simply, is to share one ordinary “gay veteran” experience in the Republic of Korea—so I can raise questions about the prejudice that “gays can’t do military service properly and must be isolated in groups of men,” and, at the same time, offer LGBTQ readers a bit of courage and a few practical tips.

As you might expect, there are far more situations in the military where you have to hide your real self than situations where you can reveal it. It’s a place where men gathered from all over the country live in constant contact all day long, under a system that operates somewhat outside ordinary social norms. Revealing myself required a great deal of courage and preparation. So in the early days of my service, I hid myself as hard as I could. Want to see the four skills I used?

The first, “acting like a tough, manly guy,” is basic—and also one of the hardest. No matter how carefully you watch yourself 24 hours a day, you can’t perfectly conceal every part of you that isn’t, to begin with, that kind of guy. So I chose the second method: “getting wildly into girl groups.” Of course, I had no reason to get obsessed with girl groups the way other guys did. I could tell they were pretty, but they could never be more than that for me. Still, I deliberately acted like looks mattered a lot to me, and I went over the top cheering for girl group stages and music videos. My buddies reacted like, “So you’re a guy after all?!?!” If you can also stay calm when the conversation turns crude, and toss back a line or two at the right moment, the effect is even more complete.

The third method was “making up experience.” In the military, you naturally become close with the guys around you. Once you train together or stand guard together, there are situations where you have to talk. Sometimes the conversation drifts to funny stories or scary ones, but the most common topic—over and over—is “sexual talk.” First times, stories about girlfriends, club stories—people use them to stay awake or fight off the cold. If I flat-out denied having any stories, I risked being labeled boring. And I felt like I would be losing a chance to keep myself hidden. So I started making up stories. I took experiences that were actually about my feelings for men—crushes, flirting, relationships, the way I built connection—and I swapped them into the framework of stories about women, turning them into imaginary heterosexual experiences. This worked better than I expected.

The downside was that some guys got so invested that they pressed me for details—my imaginary girlfriend’s name, height, weight, hairstyle, hair color. That was… a problem. In those moments, the key is to act shy, think fast, and improvise. That’s the trick.

The fourth and last is what I call the “slick eel” skill. The closer I got to discharge, the more I let go of the urge to hide and started living in a more natural way. And as that happened, some guys would tilt their heads and say I felt “a little different” from the average man. Sometimes, in a joking tone, they’d even say I seemed gay. If you respond with an awkward laugh and “Ah… no I’m not?!” doesn’t that just make everything more awkward? That’s when you use the slick eel skill.

If someone says, “Hey, you didn’t go on leave and do it with a guy, did you??” I put on a dead-serious face, grab his wrist, and say: “Back then… in the karaoke room… was it good…?” Then everyone screams, laughs, and you slip out of the situation. Or, under the excuse of “punishing” the guy who made that comment, you can lunge at him—pin him down or climb on top of him—half massage, half tickle, and ride the moment out that way too.

Honestly, whether it’s school, the military, or workplace, if you live your day-to-day life constantly hiding yourself, there are times when it gets so suffocating you want to just spill everything out. In my case, I feel that being a sexual minority makes up a significant part of who I am, so whenever I’m chatting with people or giving someone advice, I can feel the range of what I can honestly say shrink dramatically. But revealing your true self too quickly is extremely risky. So now, let me tell you about five times I managed to come out successfully in the military.

The first, third, and fifth coming-outs happened in similar ways. Over a long period of time, I slowly let slip bits of information about my blog to the guys I had marched and trained with—guys who had literally grabbed my hand and pulled me forward so we could finish every forced march together. I watched their reactions to LGBTQ people, little by little. When I became confident that each of them wasn’t negative and would likely be able to accept it to some extent, I looked for the right moment and came out. One of the guys I came out to most recently even reassured me before I said anything. When I hesitated, he said, “If you can trust me, you can tell me anything. If not, you don’t have to. I keep my mouth shut, and I don’t care about that kind of thing.” That calmed me down. People say awareness of LGBTQ issues has improved a lot among teens and people in their twenties compared to the past. Even so, it’s not wise to come out impulsively just because someone feels like a close friend. If that person is negative toward LGBTQ people, it can become a burden and a painful wound for both of you. Of course, if persistent effort could help them change that negativity, that would be wonderful—but I don’t think it’s easy. In my case, those coming-outs ended well. Even inside the military, we were close enough to be playful with intense skinship, and we still keep in touch now. They even give me useful tips when they run into LGBTQ-related assignments at school.

The second coming-out happened with a guy who lived right next to me—my closest buddy from the same intake, and, by age, an older brother. But I never intended to come out to him. He could be rough with his words, he had strong convictions, and above all, I didn’t know what he thought about LGBTQ people. Then one night, we were assigned to the same guard post. While we talked about this and that, we somehow got onto the topic of “ideal types,” and he suddenly said, “I think so differently from most people that if I say what I really think, people look at me like I’m weird. So I’m just going to keep my mouth shut.” I kept pressing him to give me an example. And then, out of nowhere, he brought up LGBTQ people. “Even if my kid were LGBTQ, I’d accept them like it’s nothing.” I thought my heart would burst. And standing guard together, it felt natural to continue the conversation and come out.

▲ A military couple spotted in North Korea (Source: Shinmungo News)

The last experience I want to share is the fourth coming-out, which I did with a junior. This guy had lived overseas for a long time, and he already knew someone among his foreign friends who had come out as gay. So it was much easier to come out to him. When I was discharged, he even wrote me a handwritten letter and gave me his Skype contact, telling me to stay in touch from abroad. He’s a buddy I’ll always remember. Technically he was my junior, but we’re the same age, so now we speak more comfortably with each other and keep a good relationship. He’s also given me a lot of advice about my overseas training. Just the fact that I met such good colleagues in the military, and that I was able to come out successfully, makes me feel genuinely happy—and honestly, blessed.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m just an ordinary gay man in Republic of Korea who wants to push back against prejudice. I’m also a healthy young man who finished military service in a fun and meaningful way—taking on counseling duty, barber duty, company clerk duty, and even my own specialty role, and then, after discharge, bringing a pile of food back to the unit just to visit. Is going to the military really the problem? Are the perpetrators of sexual assault in the military really sexual minorities? To be honest, there were many times I felt humiliated by the sexual language other soldiers used. But please don’t worry. Awareness of human rights is gradually becoming more firmly established in the military, and in the human rights trainings we receive from time to time, LGBTQ people are always mentioned. Even at this very moment, LGBTQ people around me are continuing their service without major incident. And countless LGBTQ people across Korea are, in the same way, finishing their service while hiding themselves—or revealing themselves. I hope we can all live with pride, knowing that we are healthy and rightful citizens of Republic of Korea.

Blogger / HaGaDa (formerly “AongDaong”)