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🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

Rights Groups Protest Removal of LGBT Content from South Korean Anti-Hate Guidelines

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • The groups said the Education Ministry removed LGBT-related content from its planned guidebook on responding to hate and discriminatory expression in schools.
  • They alleged that an official cited concerns about complaints opposing the material.
  • Demonstrators in Seoul called for the content to be restored and for the removal process to be disclosed transparently.

Rain fell on Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square as activists held rainbow umbrellas and flags to protest the exclusion of LGBT people from the Education Ministry’s planned guidebook on hate and discriminatory expression.

A coalition of 132 human rights and civil society groups, including the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, the Coalition for the Enactment of an Anti-Discrimination Act, Ddingdong and Rainbow Action, held the news conference on Sept. 1. They criticized the ministry for deleting LGBT-related material from guidance intended to prevent hateful and discriminatory language from spreading in schools.

The participants said an Education Ministry official had explained that the LGBT section was removed because complaints against it would be burdensome. The groups rejected that reasoning, arguing that requests to exclude LGBT people from anti-hate guidance themselves constitute hate speech.

They demanded the immediate restoration of the deleted content and called on the ministry to disclose clearly how and why the material was removed. Protesters carried rainbow-colored umbrellas and flags as they made their demands in the rain.

The request to exclude LGBT people from the response to hate and discrimination is itself hate speech.

— The protesting civil society groupsThe coalition challenged the reported reason for removing LGBT-related content from the ministry’s guidebook.
About this summary

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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