AP Photo: South Korean surgeon, Dr. Kim Seok-kwun.
Times are changing in South Korea, where open discussion about sexuality has long been taboo.
Although gay marriage still isn’t legal, popular film director Kim Jho Kwang-soo symbolically wed his male partner in the country’s first ever public same-sex ceremony last year. A few films and TV seriescontaining homosexual content have been hits and Hong Suk-cheon, Korea’s first openly gay celebrity, returned to work in recent years after getting banned from the business.
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One man who has helped spark South Korea’s slowly but steadily changing perspective on sexuality is Dr. Kim Seok-kwun, 61, dubbed “father of South Korean transgender people.” The devout Protestant has conducted about 320 sex change operations for 28 years in the hope of “correcting God’s mistakes,” as he told the Associated Press recently. One of Kim’s most recent patients included a male-born Buddhist monk who underwent 11 hours of surgery to be reborn as a female.
Harisu, South Korea’s transsexual singer and actress, is Kim’s best known patient. Kim even officiated at her 2007 wedding.
“Some people are born without genitals or with cleft lips or with no ears or with their fingers stuck together,” Kim told AP. “Why does God create people like this? Aren’t these God’s mistakes? And isn’t a mismatched sexual identity a mistake, too?”
Originally a cosmetic surgeon at Dong-A University Hospital in Busan, Kim’s career took an unexpected turn in 1986 when various men came into his office dressed in women’s clothes and asked him to construct vaginas for them.
Kim admitted that he was “overcome with a sense of shame” when he first thought of performing sex change operations, but then he realized these individuals were absolutely desperate. “Without them, they’d kill themselves,” he told AP.
“I’ve decided to defy God’s will,” Kim said.
Some right-wing Christian groups in Korea have deemed Kim’s work “blasphemy.” But, reflecting changing views in the country, Kim’s earlier patients tended to be in their 40s and 50s, with parents who threatened to disown these adult children, whereas today many of his patients are in their 20s—and some of their parents even pay for the surgery, which costs from $10,000 to 30,000.
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