Global petition launched against alleged gay soldier crackdown

A global gay rights organization has launched an online petition campaign to call for an end to an alleged crackdown on gay soldiers in South Korea.

“Authorities can scrap the ‘anti-gay hunt’ provision from South Korea’s military criminal code. But they won’t do it unless they see a massive global outcry,” the group, All Out, said on its campaign page. “Sign the petition and help stop the anti-gay hunt in South Korea.”

Having opened Tuesday, the petition had collected over 23,000 signatures by Thursday afternoon.

South Korea has long enforced a gay ban in the military, but recent cases have brought global attention to its anti-sodomy military law.

In one such case, the military court last month sentenced a gay solider to six months in jail, suspended for a year, for having consensual sex with a same-sex solider in a private place.

He was charged with violating the Military Criminal Act, which outlaws sodomy and other “disgraceful acts” in the armed forces, regardless of whether there was mutual consent, and carries a jail term of up to two years.

The military human rights group says that in April, Army chief of staff Gen. Jang Jun-gyu ordered a measure to hunt for and identify gay soldiers. The military used dating apps to lure gay soldiers into outing themselves and put up to 50 people on its gay list through the crackdown, the group claimed.

The Korean military has denied the allegations, saying it only investigated those involved in a video of two servicemen having sex posted via social media.

“I urge you to drop the charges against the soldiers and repeal the discriminatory provision in Article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Code,” the petition reads.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)