A 2006 survey launched by a coalition of NGOs in South Korea shows that transgender people face constant challenges in school and public life, suffer discrimination in recruitment and employment, and experience unstable social and family relationships. Due to their gender identity, many transgender people are subjected to insults (65.4 per cent), sexual harassment (44.9 per cent), and sexual assault (20.5 per cent). Respectively 37.7 per cent and 36.4 per cent of the respondents said that they had endured or ignored such abuses because they wanted to avoid further discrimination or were unwilling to make their gender identity public (National Human Rights Commission of Korea 2009).
We have a report on one case in Taiwan where a private hospital was fined T$50,000 for firing a male employee who had begun dressing as a woman at work (Straits Times 2011). In Japan in 2002 the Tokyo District Court ruled that an employer had unjustly fired a male employee who lived as a woman. The unnamed former employee was awarded around $20,000 in compensation (Reuters 2002).
Conclusions
A legal reform agenda in the East Asian region would not focus on decriminalisation, as it does in South Asia and Africa. Criminal prohibitions of homosexual acts were never a strong feature in East Asian history. The struggle to gain a place in public social and political space has been underway for many years, with non-confrontational public actions, LGBT advocacy organisations, growing media attention, and expanding commercial venues. Advocacy organisations have grown stronger, though typically they are still small and weak. Any LGBT reform agendas seem to slide over seeking employment anti-discrimination laws, which were lead issues in North America and Europe for many years. Gaining such a law is the lead issue in Hong Kong because of the existence of other employment non-discrimination laws and success in decrimi — nalisation. Activist reform agendas in the region, almost by default, are drawn to the marriage equality issue, with its simplicity, current international validation, and its demand for full legal and moral equivalency. Public wedding ceremonies, promoting legal recognition, are now regular events.
Occasionally, the invocation of past history has been useful. A report by the Law Reform Commission in Hong Kong in 1983 recommended the decriminalisation of homosexual acts and cited Chinese tradition. The report noted that homosexual relationships ‘were well documented in classical literature in ancient China back to 3000 years’ and ‘quite open and prevalent in the Tang Dynasty’ (UNDP 2010: 5).
There has been a sufficient rise in LGBT visibility and legitimacy to trigger organised opposition in many societies in the region, often based in Christian minorities. Active, vocal and effective opposition is notable in three jurisdictions, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, more noticeable than ongoing reform (Collett 2013c).
At the moment, we are not in a period of significant legal reform in East Asia. There is only incremental change. Legal recognition of relationships, however, may begin very soon in one or two places.
Further reading