| Abstract |
The term “chongbuk gei” (pro-North Korea gay) has emerged in South Koreananti-LGBTQ rhetoric in recent years. The use of this term has reignited the war era scaretactics, ultimately creating a spurious connection between sexual perversion and politicalsubversion, and placing blame on members of these groups as threats to national security.Portrayals of “sexual perversion” in the discourse of anti-Communism also emerged inpostwar Taiwan. This paper focuses on the interaction between political and sexual discoursewithin the framework of Cold War ideology, investigating how the representations of sexualperversion were applied to dehumanize the Communists and establish a new sexual standard.To this end, this paper examines media representation of Communists and homosexuals in the1950s and 1960s, with a further discussion on the novels Rival Suns (1961), Living Forever(1959) and “The Wounded” (1966), published during the early postwar period in Taiwan andSouth Korea. It is found that a considerable number of media and literary representations ofCommunist and homosexual figures were linked to brutal murder, sexual violence anddeviance, resulting in the general public’s contempt toward these two groups. Media andliterary outlets are obvious paths for political ideology to permeate into the everyday life of thegeneral public, while classist, racist, and ethnic conflicts are often replaced with contradictionson sexuality. As this paper argues, political ideology and sexual politics must becross-examined for a better understanding of the operational modes of various power relationswithin society. |
