Discovery of the [Queer] Minjung Tradition: The Sinchon Station IDAHOBIT Billboard Vandalism and Queer Korean Politics of Visibility

Abstract

This theoretical piece discusses the Sinchon Station IDAHOBIT billboard vandalism case and the collective action that occurred in reaction to it in August 2020 to open more avenues and perspectives for studying queer visibility politics in South Korea. A Bakhtinian “carnival,” the culture of queer Korean visibility politics draws inspirations from many different sources, signifying multiple perspectives and affects that are often considered incompatible with one another. Through semi-structured interviews of individuals who participated in constructing the co-authored space of the IDAHOBIT billboard, this project parses out the eclecticism involved in the creative poaching of Sinchon Station that sources aesthetics and historicity from internationalist queer visibility politics, local traditions of Korean leftist democratic movements, K-pop fan practices, etc. A reconsideration of the Sinchon Station IDAHOBIT billboard as a site of complex intentions pushes us to (borrowing Cedric Robinson and Sunyoung Park’s words) “discover” the historical vein of radically transformative power through queer praxis.