A rare win for Asia’s LGBTQ community started with a health insurance mix-up
SEOUL—For most of 2020, Kim Yong-min and So Sung-uk enjoyed joint family coverage with the nation’s public health insurer. Then an abrupt call severed their government benefits. A mistake had been made, an insurance representative explained to Kim.
“We didn’t realize your partner was also a man," the caller told Kim. Nullifying the same-sex couple’s health insurance set off a multiyear legal saga that produced a landmark victory last month for Kim and So—and South Korea’s LGBTQ community, which won its first-ever legal recognition by the government. The high court’s chief justice called the rescinding of health benefits an act of discrimination that “violates human dignity and value." South Korea has artificial intelligence pop singers, robot baristas and drone deliveries.
Despite those modern flourishes, the country lags far behind other wealthy democracies on LGBTQ rights. Same-sex couples can’t legally marry; civil unions are nonexistent. Just one in eight South Koreans say they even know someone who is gay or lesbian, recent polling shows.
Many LGBTQ individuals in the country are closeted, condemned and censored. A recent Human Rights Watch report that documented the frequent bullying experienced by South Korea’s sexual minorities was titled: “I Thought of Myself as Defective." Now, many supporters of the LGBTQ community hope the ruling could open the way to more rights—even same-sex marriage. Courtroom victories elsewhere in the past have served as steppingstones to marriage equality, including the U.S.
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