보이지 않는 군인들: 한국 군대 내 동성애혐오와 성소수자 정체성

초록

This study aims to analyze the relationship between the military and homosexuality by analyzing the experiences of sexual minority soldiers in the Korean military beyond the claim that homosexuality in the Korean military is a social and national “problem”. In recent years, the anti-homosexual discourses have been spreading that homosexuality in the military is causing the serious national crisis. However, substantive researches or sociological interests are insufficient. Meanwhile, homosexuality in the military has been defined as a perverse existence to be managed and punishment in the change of the ‘Sexual Harassment in Military Criminal Act’ or ‘the Military Discipline Instructions’ since the mid-the 2000s. However, unlike anti-homosexual discourse or legal discourse that calls homosexuality in the military as a “problem,” non-normative sexual identity in the military actually exists as a process rather than a fixed, essential attribute or category. In the military that is male-centered and heterosexual -oriented, sexual minorities are coping strategies for surviving by “passing” into heterosexuals and practicing being joined into the male bond, or by separately performing military service successfully. Some sexual minorities have been criticizing the military from the point of view of a man who is not a ‘heterosexual soldier’, that is, an ‘inside outsider’, by first being aware of and accepting his sexual identity in the military. These experiences reveal that self-representation carried out by sexual minority soldiers in the institutional and cultural conditions of the military is in the dilemma of self-contradiction and invisibility of homosexuality. However, this dilemma comes not from the strategic gender practice itself of the sexual minorities but from the institution itself, which reproduces homophobia and sexism and recognizes only heterosexuals as ‘men’.

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