Dear TVXQ, Shipping Showed Me a Way Out of the Church

This is From a K-pop Fan, With Love, a column by Giaae Kwon about her K-pop obsessions, past and present.

When I’m barely twenty years old, I go to a friend’s house for an impromptu reunion. I haven’t kept in touch with most of the people from my high school youth group, so I wander around the house looking for the few people I do know. Eventually, I end up in the kitchen, seating myself in the free chair as someone mentions in a hushed voice, “Did you hear about him? He’s gay now.”

I miss his name, so I wonder who it might be, running through the different youth group boys in my head. I never figure out who it is, but the moment stays with me: the lowered voice, the quiet that falls over the group, the way my stomach churns with a discomfort I can’t name.

It’ll be years before I’m able to work through the anti-LGBTQ bigotry I grew up with. Now, it makes me profoundly sad and angry every time I glimpse back into that world and realize that not much has changed.

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TVXQ debuted in 2004, a five-member boy band from SM Entertainment, one of Korea’s top three entertainment companies. TVXQ was implicitly meant to continue on and advance the legacy of H.O.T., the five-member boy band that launched the pop industry in Korea, even going so far as to take inspiration from H.O.T.’s style from “I Yah!” (both sartorially and musically) for their first studio album. With their looks, powerful choreography, and vocals (TVXQ was also known for singing a capella), they rapidly rose in popularity, debuting in Japan in 2006 and crossing over to massive success.

At the height of my TVXQ fandom, 2005 to 2010, I was still deep in the church. I never would have described myself as being “antigay”—I didn’t hate gay people. I loved them in the Christian way of hating the sin and loving the sinner, and I would never condemn them—I just wanted to save their souls. I also believed they deserved equal rights, but my twenty-year-old self couldn’t explain what I meant by that, as I rambled about civil unions and other ideas picked up in my conservative Christian church, the only social circle I knew. Like many Christians, I did mental gymnastics trying to appear loving, kind, and open-minded. Besides, it wasn’t like I actually knew anyone who was queer. To consider the homosexual was entirely theoretical, making it all too easy to discuss anything related to LGBTQ identity in a casual way, with no personal stakes.

Given how anti-LGBTQ some Koreans can be, it’s ironic that K-pop fandom is where I first actively encountered queerness via “shipping,” or taking two members of an idol group and pairing them up. While shipping isn’t exclusive to K-pop fandom, there’s a homoerotic intensity to K-pop shipping that I find curious but unsurprising—idols aren’t allowed to date, because romantic relationships would fracture the idol/fan fantasy.

Shipping often made me uncomfortable when I was younger, and I never sought it out in fan communities, though it felt unavoidable because most of the good fanfic writers I found within the TVXQ fandom were all about shipping. I admit that I found it distasteful to read about same-sex desire and sexual acts, even if some of the writing was beautiful and erotic. I could read only up to a certain rating or level of intensity—yearning, touching, kissing, never anything that went beyond. I’d scroll past the more explicit sex scenes, never stopping to let myself consider why depictions of men being attracted to men made me feel so bad or question the anti-LGBTQ messaging I had been taught.

Once, during college, I sat with my best friend in my car in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box. It was late, and we were discussing gay marriage, and she wasn’t a Christian. She kept asking how I could rationalize this idea of “hate the sin, love the sinner.” What did that even mean? How could you separate a person’s identity from the person? Could I make it make sense to her? Eventually, the conversation ended with me pleading for her to understand that this was my faith. I didn’t have all the answers, and I couldn’t summarize everything neatly for her because I didn’t know everything, but I believed—I had to believe. That’s why it was called faith. I knew my replies weren’t satisfactory, that they were empty and confusing, but I needed her to accept that this was all I could give her.

Even then, I knew how feeble I sounded, and I hated my inability to defend myself, to make a case for my faith and provide concrete rebuttals to her questions and scenarios. I didn’t like to sit and think about these gaps in my knowledge though—and I wouldn’t, not for another ten years, when a gradual erosion of my faith would culminate in a conversation with a group of women. “God doesn’t just give you enough suffering that you can handle,” one said. “He takes you just past that point because that’s when you really fall onto your knees and depend fully on him.” The other women nodded in agreement, finding peace in that idea, but I was horrified, because that is neither grace nor love but abuse. I realized I could no longer find comfort or peace in the unforgiving spaces of organized religion by closing my eyes and pretending that the bigotry didn’t exist.

Leaving the church, leaving faith, is the most difficult, painful thing I have ever done, but eventually, I did. In the mid-2010s, as I went through a period of questioning my own sexuality, I came face-to-face with the knee-jerk viciousness and sheer hatred toward LGBTQ people in the Christian community I’d grown up in. Even the idea that I could be gay caused people’s eyes to go immediately cold, their voices turning frosty and tense—and these were people who had known me since I was a child. I became a monster just for questioning the heteronormative expectations placed on me, and it was immediately clear how swift and absolute the consequences would be if I were queer, not only for me, but also for my family. Korean culture, which carries heavily through first- and 1.5-generation Korean Americans, is a social one, not individual, and my parents would also lose their friendships, their social standing, their respect in the church they had served for decades.

Since then, I haven’t been able to reconcile the church’s rejection of homosexuality with the gospel message of love. I now question the merit of Christians’ faith by how they regard and treat LGBTQ people. Are they able to approach queer people with love and respect, to break bread with them without judgment as Christ did with tax collectors, or does the very thought make them red-faced and angry? Does their faith open them up to the world, or does it make them narrow-minded?

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Jaejoong is the K-pop idol that has woven himself into my identity. My online ID, jjoongie, is a play on his name, shorthand for what you might affectionately call him in Korean: JaeJoongie, Joongie, Jjoongie. He’s beautiful, though maybe a little alien-esque when he used to wear circle lenses that made his immense eyes look even wider and glassier. My favorite phase of his was during TVXQ’s second album, his hair dyed jet-black and cut in a shag around his face. His lips are full, his skin pale, and even then I could believe that Jaejoong was perhaps too pretty to be straight.

There are generally several ships within a fandom. Within TVXQ, Yunho and Jaejoong (YunJae) were the biggest ship, but Jaejoong and Yoochun (JaeChun) were also one, as were Yoochun and Junsu (YooSu), et cetera. In any fandom, there could be multiple combinations with various members, but within TVXQ, YunJae was the most popular because Yunho, as the leader, was depicted as the appa of the group, while Jaejoong was the umma. Physically, they also made for a striking pair. “YunJae is real” became the tagline as fans devoted to the ship created websites, blogs, and forums dedicated to providing proof that YunJae wasn’t just a fictional ship but something that existed in real life. YunJae fans went wild over fanservice that Yunho and Jaejoong threw at them during concerts or signings, but I always wondered—what would happen if Yunho and Jaejoong were indeed “real”? How would people actually react in Korea?

I’ve long wondered if Korea’s anti-LGBTQ bigotry is mostly the result of religious belief, or if it’s also built into Korea’s patriarchal culture. Korea, as far as religion goes, is a plurality—roughly 30 percent of the population identifies as Christian (whether Protestant or Catholic), roughly 25 percent as Buddhist, and roughly 45 percent as being without religion. Christianity has a long, complicated history in Korea, and the most vocal objections to queer people in Korea come from within its Christian communities.

Homosexuality isn’t illegal in Korea, but there are no antidiscrimination laws to protect LGBTQ people, and anti-LGBTQ sentiment runs strong. Being openly queer in Korea means risking so much loss—loss of your family, your career, your social standing. In a communal culture like Korea’s, where the social unit (on a micro level, your family; on a macro level, your country) overrides the individual, your personal actions reverberate through all your social ties—and can affect them too. This is why parents will take the babies of their single daughters and abandon them; why the fear of shame will make people conform and remain in toxic, abusive marriages; why it’s remarkable and powerful that a movement like #MeToo has gained traction in Korea, spurring investigations in the offices of prominent male politicians. A photographer in Korea who shoots portraits of gay couples blurs out their names when sharing on social media, captioning the photos with the hope that, one day, it will be safe for these couples to be open in sharing their love and joy.

All this risk means that I don’t do much speculating about any Korean public figure’s sexuality; that’s their business. This prejudice and consequent risk spill into the diaspora, too, and many of my own fellow second-generation Korean Americans, whether within the constraints of Christianity or not, are never allowed the space to examine their sexuality or identity. We are assumed to be straight, queerness acceptable only within this hazy realm of shipping.

K-pop idols are well aware of shipping, and they’ll often cater to their fans, playing it up at concerts, on variety shows, during fan meetings. In 2006, TVXQ appeared for several episodes on a variety show called Banjun Drama. In one of the episodes, “Dangerous Love,” Jaejoong comes out to their van to see Yunho hiding out alone, clearly hiding something he was looking at. When pressed, Yunho holds up a sheaf of papers and asks eagerly, “Hey, have you seen this? It’s fanfic about us—and, in it, we’re that way.” The rest of the episode is filled with fanservice as the two enact different romantic, sexually tinged scenarios that play up the YunJae ship. There’s laughter when Yunho leans in to whisper, “We’re that way,” into Jaejoong’s ear, more laughter as Jaejoong reads lines from the fanfic portraying YunJae in a romantic act. It’s meant to be funny, all of this homoerotic tension acceptable because it exists within the realm of fiction, of shipping. But turning homosexuality into something so outrageous it can only be laughed at is antigay.

This is why I can’t get fully behind shipping in K-pop—because so much of it is grounded in antiqueerness, in the desire and imperative of fans to control their idols and refuse them agency. If Yunho and Jaejoong had come out as a gay couple, they might have been pilloried, their careers ruined. Playing into shipping, however, is okay, even encouraged, because it’s a part of fandom. As idols age, they’re allowed to date, because even idols ought to get married and have children, but these relationships are still expected to fall within heteronormative expectations. Thus, shipping is also acceptable because of its impermanence. As far as I know, the members of TVXQ have all grown up and started dating their rumored girlfriends; Junsu, the most flamboyant of the five, has been public about his relationship with EXID’s Hani.

It’s been years since I’ve followed TVXQ. In 2010, three of the members—Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu—broke away from SM Entertainment, forming their own trio, JYJ. JYJ released a few albums but never reached the same success as TVXQ, which continued on as a duo. Junsu has crafted himself a strong career in musical theater, releasing a few solo albums. Yoochun built a solid acting career before he was accused of rape, and I hope his career is now over. Jaejoong released some solo music, also went into acting, and was caught on video verbally abusing and physically striking sasaeng fans who had followed him home yet again.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the YunJae shippers. I’m sure there was plenty of fan dramatization of how Yunho felt betrayed by Jaejoong in 2010, but Yunho and Jaejoong have moved on, and so maybe the shippers have too. Whoever they were, wherever they are now, they changed my life by introducing my sheltered young Christian self to queerness almost fifteen years ago, allowing me to eventually take my first steps away from the world I’d grown up in. Sometimes, I miss the old comfort of faith, of being able to fall back on but this is what I believe as an excuse, but I am more grateful to have escaped the built-in bigotry of the church I once attended.

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In June 2016, as my personal struggle with faith came to its breaking point, the Korean Queer Festival held their Pride parade in Seoul. There was plenty of turmoil leading up to it, with a court ruling denying a petition by a gay couple seeking legal status for their marriage. Anti-LGBTQ protestors showed up, unsurprisingly, with signs condemning homosexuality as a sin. They prayed and collected signatures for a petition to outlaw homosexuality outright.

Along the route, though, you could see a tent with a group of middle-aged women gloriously decked out in full ajumma gear—perms, matching T-shirts, accessories—all of them dancing together, holding their arms out to the youth marching by in the parade. They were mothers of LGBTQ children, there to show their support and offer encouragement to young queer people, many of whom continue to face rejection and familial loss in Korea.

Many of the young people sobbed in the arms of these ajummas, and it was heartbreaking but incredible to see, especially as someone who still witnessess anti-LGBTQ hatred and disgust in the Korean Christian community I grew up in. These ajummas looked like ajummas I know, bounced around like I’ve seen ajummas do, dwarfed by the young people who crouched down to find comfort in their arms—and, in the face of all that familiarity, as the faith-based foundation of the world I’d known crumbled away under my feet, I thought, Goddamn, maybe there is hope for us all.

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