In October 2022, Professor Minwoo Jung was invited to deliver a talk on “Queering Authoritarianism: The Politics of Rights in South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan” at the University of Toronto, which was co-sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Korea, the Mark S. Bonham Centre for the Sexual Diversity Studies, the Department of Sociology, the Women and Gender Studies Institute, and the Centre for the Southeast Asian Studies and the Global Taiwan Studies Program at the Asian Institute, University of Toronto.

In addition to the talk, a graduate student workshop was conducted with Professor Jung, moderated by Pamela Tsui and Matthew Muchas, editors of the Taiwan Gazette. In the workshop, Professor Jung shared his experiences of conducting field research in multiple Asian countries, as well as his journey as an international student and Asian scholar in North America and his involvement with queer activism and scholarship.

The conversation is published in the Taiwan Gazette in three parts. The first part features Professor Jung discussing his multi-sited ethnography project in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, as well as the challenges and opportunities of conducting comparative ethnographic research in Asia. In the second part, he shares insights on how LGBT activists in different countries can learn from each other and discusses his experience balancing activism and research. In the final part, Professor Jung offers advice for international and queer studies students navigating North American academe, particularly in addressing the tension between Western theories and Asian contexts in research.

The conversation was conducted in English and has been edited for clarity.

Minwoo Jung is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago. His research investigates the impacts of global and regional geopolitics on political, economic, and social life of marginalized groups and individuals. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork conducted across East and Southeast Asia, he is working on a book project that presents a comparative ethnography of the intimate entanglements of queer lives and geopolitics. His work has been published in The British Journal of Sociology, The Sociological Review, Social Movement Studies, and positions: asia critique. He received his Ph.D. in sociology in 2021 from the University of Southern California.

We extend our sincere gratitude to Professor Hae Yeon Choo for her efforts in organizing the graduate student workshop.

Edited by P. Tsui

Cover Image: Minwoo Jung (pictured) attending the IDAHOT march in Seoul, May 2022, demanding the legislation of anti-discrimination law. The picket reads, “Our march changes the world, our chanting creates a new era, our fight ends hate.”

Taiwan Gazette: From your research and community experiences, how may LGBT activists in different Asian countries (or Global South in general) learn from each other to advance social justice?

Minwoo Jung: This is a great question, and one that I want to explore in detail in one chapter of my book project. Although we aspire to see more global south-global south connections and interactions that decolonize, transnational coalition-building is not a natural process and can be challenging to achieve, given the daily demands and conditions faced by activists. Creating international events, such as organizing international activist conferences, requires funding and institutional support, which can be difficult to obtain. Also, the lack of a lingua franca in Asia means that communication often relies on English, and different areas of expertise, such as legal expertise, must be brought in. And lastly, it’s important to consider whether activists have the interest and aspiration to build transnational networks. Based on my research, there are mixed understandings of transnational coalition-building, and we shouldn’t assume that everyone is interested or able to participate.

What I find interesting is that, in Taiwan, given the sovereignty activism that I mentioned earlier, they truly need the support of the international community, so they invest a lot in it. For instance, many of my Taiwanese friends whom I interviewed were studying English and attending English institutes, and they even hired private English tutors. I was one of their tutors, and I helped them prepare their slides and presentation scripts when they delivered speeches or presentations at international activist conferences. They always make an effort to present themselves in a certain way to the international community, which is a reflection of the resources they invest in building transnational coalitions. And then my South Korean activist friends would say, “they’re crazy,” and that they don’t invest the time to study English because they think it’s a waste of time. So there are different ideas about whether English can be valuable capital for their activism.

In Taiwan’s context, they put a significant amount of effort into establishing coalitions with Western counterparts, such as Australia, Canada, the US, and Nordic European countries, that successfully led the marriage equality movement. They also aimed to build ties with Asian groups who share a sense of anti-authoritarianism, which has been exemplified by the #MilkTeaAlliance against Chinese authoritarianism, Myanmar authoritarianism, and others.

When it comes to South Korea, the question of a transnational coalition for solidarity activism is in a grey area, whether it could be part of the solidarity effort or not, and who are we in solidarity with? Are we in solidarity with the UN or with a particular group? There have been some diversified efforts – for some human rights lawyers, it’s about engaging the UN system as members, while others are more interested in region-based organizations such as ILGA Asia. A few board members and the current co-chair of ILGA Asia have been Korean activists. There are also those who are interested in grassroots-level coalitions, building ties, and putting events together, but again, it’s largely limited by the lack of material resources, language barriers, funding, and other logistical challenges.

In Singapore, the activists are not particularly interested in transnational interactions and ties. Such efforts are often viewed as external interventions that are “not Singaporean enough.” Building such ties could be seen as a threat to the authoritarian state, which resulted in a ban on foreign-based multinational corporations sponsoring LGBT events in 2016.[1] As a result of this, they switched from relying on foreign-based multinational corporations to local small and medium-sized enterprises. These variations in the ways in which they conceive of and practice transnational coalitions are another question that I have been trying to answer in a paper that, hopefully, I can publish soon.

Taiwan Gazette: In addition to studying LGBT movements, you also engage the LGBT communities by sharing your research findings. How do you juggle between activism and research? How can academic research contribute to the struggles of marginalized people?

Minwoo Jung: That’s a really, really great question. Personally, I don’t believe that the research we produce as scholars can have a direct impact on real-life events. If you believe so, that’s amazing. (Laugh) While it’s certainly possible, it’s more likely that any impact would be the result of a historical coincidence or other contingent forces rather than the nature of our work. It’s not really about what or how we do things, although there might have been discussions about doing more public-oriented research and public sociology. As professionally trained scholars, we tend to do scholarship that speaks to a very narrow audience, just like other professionals. Lawyers don’t speak in a plain manner at the courts, right? Doctors are trained to speak in a very particular way to their patients, too. Other than speaking with our students and teaching undergraduate students, public-facing work is not the main part of our training in the Ph.D. program, at least in North America.

Going beyond our normal work as scholars requires extra effort and time. It’s an additional task that we can choose to engage in or not, depending on our interests and capacity. Not everyone has to do this job, and it’s okay if it’s not for you. Ultimately, it’s a personal decision on whether we want to put in that extra work. And the community that you choose to contribute to is also a personal decision. It may be the community that you belong to, care for, or are indebted to. In my case, I am permanently indebted to the activist communities in the three countries I have studied. My research and data collection, as well as the camaraderie I have experienced, have made me feel a strong obligation to give back. It’s a moral sense for me, guided by my own moral compass, but others may feel differently.

When it comes to contributing to different communities, sharing your research with relevant groups, as you mentioned in the question, is just the starting point. You may need to translate your research into more accessible language, such as writing op-eds, policy briefs, or newsletters. But such work may not be recognized as part of academic productivity or help you get a job or tenure. So, it’s important to find other sources of compensation or motivation for doing this extra work, such as a sense of moral obligation or personal fulfilment.

Regarding other types of engagement, I have also taken on on-demand research work. For instance, although I am not an expert in HIV/AIDS issues, I became involved in HIV/AIDS activism in South Korea and developed close friendships with activists there. They asked me to help them better understand the situations in Taiwan and Singapore, so I provided them with some on-demand work. This was not part of my research or book project but rather an extra job that I took on to help my activist friends. I have the necessary training to do a good job, and so I felt that it was a way for me to share my expertise and support their cause. It was more efficient than having them struggle through ten different English articles, for example.

Also, I sometimes provide consultation to my friends who are seeking to establish transnational ties or collaborate with international groups. Collaboration is one of the most enjoyable parts of this work for me, especially when it involves organizing events like film screenings or workshops. I also do a lot of volunteering, whether it’s preparing for meetings or simply setting up and cleaning. While this work may not be recognized or compensated, I see it as an opportunity to contribute to causes I care about in my own way.

All the things that I just mentioned earlier are different types of contributions. From the idea of how scholarship can be a contribution, to contributing to the communities that you belong to, care for, or feel indebted to, in different ways. Now that I have a job, I can make a better donation to all these groups, which makes me really happy.

And as I hinted earlier through the conversations with Korean activist friends, my survival as a queer scholar can make a difference – just by being that representation and building a space for the next generation of scholars. Just being there when you are needed, for example, attending a demonstration, signing petitions, all these little things can also be considered as contributions. However, the remaining question is whether it’s for everyone, how much, and for how long. It varies based on who you are and which community you feel connected to. It’s not something that everyone can or has to do, but it really depends on your own ways of connecting with the communities that you study.

[1] The Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs announced that foreign companies were no longer allowed to sponsor or support events that advocate for the LGBT cause, including the annual Pink Dot event. Pink Dot had been sponsored by several multinational corporations, including Facebook, Apple, Google, Barclays, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs in previous years. The announcement indicated that the government generally rejects foreign entities interfering in domestic issues and added that foreign entities should not fund, support, or influence such events.

Continue to Part 1 and Part 3 of the conversation.