According to media experiences on June 18, metropolis officers in South Korea’s southern metropolis of Daegu tried to cease an annual LGBTQ+ delight competition, however the police stepped in to guard the organizers and ensured the occasion may proceed.

The conflict occurred on Saturday, when a whole lot of Daegu officers, led by Mayor Hong Joon Pyo, began stopping vehicles of the competition organizers from coming into the venue within the Dongseongno district. When the police tried to dissuade them, town employees received right into a bodily altercation with them. Consequently, police needed to forcibly take away them to make sure the security of the organizers and to permit the “legit” occasion to proceed.

Hong Joon Pyo was the previous chief of the now-defunct conservative Liberty Korea Party and is understood for supporting anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies. Before this bodily opposition, he led town’s enterprise homeowners and church leaders in a movement for an injunction, which requested to ban the Daegu Queer Culture Festival. Their declare was that so many individuals on the streets would disrupt native companies.

But the courtroom’s ruling was within the competition’s favor, because it justified that the liberty of expression couldn’t be suppressed for freedom of enterprise. They maintain equal weightage within the legislation’s eyes.

The Daegu Queer Culture Festival is one of many largest delight occasions within the nation. It began in 2009 and has continuously confronted protests and opposition to the occasion. In 2014, 28 totally different teams, together with native church buildings and right-wing organizations, got here collectively to kind a committee to strain town into canceling the occasion.

Daegu can be not the one metropolis to face disruptions in organizing delight occasions. Seoul’s Queer Culture Festival, the most important occasion of its form within the nation, additionally confronted pushback this 12 months. A civic committee voted to maneuver the occasion from its typical venue, the Seoul Plaza and gave the spot to the organizers of a Christian youth live performance as a substitute.