The court has been asked to review the law again. It acknowledged that while this may lead to discrimination compared with opposite-sex soldiers, such discrimination is reasonable to preserve the army’s combat power. Since 2002, the constitutional court has ruled three times that article 92-6 is constitutional, and has made it clear the law is only relevant to acts between soldiers of the same sex. Politician Yong Hye-in of the Basic Income party recently announced she is seeking to propose a bill to abolish article 92-6, claiming it contradicts the principle of equality under the country’s constitution. There has also been mounting pressure from the United Nations. She was found dead earlier this year.īoth local and international human rights groups have called for article 92-6 to be abolished. The law does not differentiate between whether the act was consensual, off-base, or off-duty.ĭiscriminatory attitudes towards LGBTQ soldiers resurfaced in 2020 when Byun Hee-soo, a staff sergeant, was forcibly discharged after undergoing gender confirmation surgery and being classified as “disabled”. There are also cases of gay soldiers being sent to psychiatric wards. In 2017, article 92-6 was used to indiscriminately monitor and punish gay men in the military, a move human rights campaigners at the time called a “witch-hunt”. President Moon Jae-in – a former human rights lawyer – said prior to becoming president that he was against homosexuality and “did not like it”. While homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea, it remains taboo in a largely conservative society.
The defendants’ conduct, it said, “is considered contrary to good sexual morality,” and was “seriously infringing” on the maintenance of military discipline. It interpreted that oral sex, according to the military code, “bordered on rape”. The pair’s lawyer said the act “was consensual” and therefore they were innocent. By engaging in mutual oral sex, they “molested” one another, the ruling reads. According to an eight-page ruling seen by the Guardian, in December 2020 a soldier entered another’s tent over the course of two nights at a time when they were part of a group isolating due to Covid-19.