There are precious few hints of the social revolutionary around Kim Seok-kwan, the 52-year-old doctor who single-handedly brought sex-change surgery to this deeply conservative country.
But there is no gainsaying Kim's audacity in introducing sex-change operations here in 1986. Nor do many South Koreans dispute the impact his surgery has had on a society where, even quite recently, sexual matters were mostly whispered about and few dared live openly as homosexuals.
That all began to change with the emergence of superstar Ha Risu, a slinky, silky-haired singer, actor, comedienne and model, armed with a 35-24-35 figure, who is now a fixture in the Korean entertainment firmament. Ha, whose adopted stage name is a play on the English phrase Hot Issue, lived most of her 28 years, unhappily, as a man, until Kim transformed her into a ravishing transgender beauty three years ago.
Kim is a plastic surgeon whose training was in facial and cranial operations, getting his start in sex-change surgery almost by accident. For years he performed the operations largely in obscurity, with awareness of his skills with a scalpel spreading mostly by word of mouth.
"In 1986, a male transvestite approached me and asked me if I could perform a sex-change operation," Kim said. "At that time, nobody knew anything about this sort of thing in Korea, and I told him I couldn't help him."
A couple of months later, the doctor said, another man approached him asking for a sex change. With that, Kim said he became intrigued enough to start reading up on the subject. Within a short time, Kim called the patient back and said he would operate.
The surgery was a first for South Korea. Not only that, but Kim also rejected the use of skin grafts for vaginal construction, which was the standard at the time.
Although the operation's success exceeded expectations, soon afterward Kim went to the University of California at Davis for a year to study more about sex change surgery. When he returned, he found a long list of candidates desperate for the operation.
For the first few years of performing gender-change surgery, Kim said, his patients were overwhelmingly working class or poor, and few could afford to travel abroad for the operation.
The first glimmers of celebrity came to Kim in 1991, with his first female-to-male surgery, which he also pioneered here. That operation caught the attention of the nation's news media.
The brouhaha eventually died down, but by the time it did, something had changed in Korean society. Taboo had been lifted, and sexual mores were suddenly being discussed much more openly in the media and portrayed with more realism in film.
‘CHINESE ASSET’: The senate cited Bamban Mayor Alice Guo in contempt after a police raid revealed a scam center operating at a facility on land she partially owned The Philippine Senate yesterday threatened to arrest a mayor for contempt during a hearing investigating her alleged ties to Chinese criminal syndicates. The arrest threat came after Bamban Mayor Alice Guo (郭華萍) failed to appear for a second consecutive hearing, citing stress. The case that began in March, when authorities raided a casino in Guo’s farming town of Bamban, has shed light on criminal activity in the mostly Chinese-backed online casino industry in the Philippines. It gained national attention after one senator asked whether Guo might not have been born in the Philippines and could even be a Chinese “asset,” an accusation she
‘DO WHATEVER’: US Representative Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC the decision was up to Joe Biden, but her lack of a full statement backing him is likely to send a signal The re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden on Wednesday hit new trouble as US Representative Nancy Pelosi said merely “it’s up to the president to decide” if he should stay in the race, celebrity donor George Clooney said he should not run, and Democratic senators and lawmakers expressed fresh fear about his ability to challenge former US president Donald Trump. Late in the evening, US Senator Peter Welch called on Biden to withdraw from the election, becoming the first Senate Democrat to do so. Welch said he is worried because “the stakes could not be higher.” The sudden flurry of pronouncements, despite
THREATS: The Japanese leader signaled concern over Russia’s war in Ukraine, its deepening cooperation with North Korea and Chinese posturing against Taiwan Russia’s deepening military cooperation with North Korea has underlined the need for Japan to forge closer ties with NATO as regional security threats become increasingly intertwined, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Reuters. In written remarks ahead of his attendance at a NATO summit in Washington this week, Kishida also signaled concern over Beijing’s alleged role in aiding Moscow’s two-year-old war in Ukraine, although he did not name China. “The securities of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its deepened military cooperation with North Korea are strong reminders of that,” Kishida said. “Japan is determined to
‘STARWARS’: The weapons would make South Korea the first country to deploy and operate laser weapons, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said South Korea is to deploy laser weapons to shoot down North Korean drones this year, becoming the world’s first country to deploy and operate such weapons in the military, the country’s arms procurement agency said yesterday. South Korea has called its laser program the “StarWars project.” The drone-zapping laser weapons that the South Korean military has developed with Hanwha Aerospace are effective and cheap, with each shot costing 2,000 won (US$1.45), and also quiet and “invisible,” the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a statement. “Our country is becoming the first country in the world to deploy and operate laser weapons, and