Fashion

Meet Jungle, the Activist Bringing Seoul’s Trans Community Together

Visits: 18

On a sweltering spring day, Jungle has come to a quiet coffee shop on a hill overlooking Itaewon, the Seoul neighborhood she calls home, for a brief moment of reflection. A few weeks prior, the Korean model, activist, performer, and creative launched Transparent, a party series that celebrates and uplifts transgender people. Timing it to the Transgender Day of Visibility at SCR, an independent underground radio station, Jungle had merely sought to create a safe space for herself and her friends, hoping that perhaps the local trans community might begin to come together. “I was worried even the night before,” she recalls, wearing a skintight Hyein Seo top and Acne Studios jeans, her freshly bleached brows highlighting sharp cheekbones. “I thought maybe no one would come.”

Happily, the party was a runaway success—guests filled the neon-lit space and spilled onto the street outside, dancing and drinking on the hilltop at sunset, as DJs played into the night. A livestream had been set up, too, “for trans people who are still afraid to come, then you can watch it from your home and have a party at home,” Jungle says. “But it was full. And I met so many people in the community. And I thought I would like us to see each other more often and be there for each other.” Before the first party had even ended, Jungle began plans for the next one: a fête that unfolded last week, just after Pride Month, at Mother Offline in nearby Hannam-dong.

The resilient Jungle has always been in motion. Born and raised in Busan, she moved to Seoul as soon as she was able and went on to Paris and London to pursue acting, before returning to Seoul in her early 30s. It was in Seoul that she became a beloved drag artist, performing at clubs in Itaewon for several years (hence her Instagram handle, @jungleusedtobeadragqueen). “Drag can be a great gateway to explore gender expression,” she says.

But she found herself struggling with the more close-minded facets of Korean society, which remains largely uneducated or misinformed about gender and sexuality. “Other parts of Asian countries have adopted more broad terms about gender, but Korea is still quite conservative,” Jungle says. “There is a lack of trans visibility in Korea and a lack of support.” When Jungle began transitioning for the first time at 20, her family accosted her and forced her to admit that she was “wrong.” She points to Harisu, the actress-model-singer hailed as the nation’s first transgender celebrity in 2001, whose meteoric rise did not translate into wider acceptance for the trans community. “There was so much curiosity about trans people, but it felt like a one-time thing,” says Jungle. “There’s so much misunderstanding and misinformation, judgment and prejudice.”

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