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www.groovekorea.com / June 2014 30 W hen the door to his of- fice wouldn’t budge, Yol sensed something was blocking it. After a call out to his office mates and several shoves, it finally opened a crack. Through it he saw a soju bottle on the floor and several wadded tissues. Then, at the base of the door, the fringe of a purple checked shirt he recognized from the evening before. This couldn’t be happening. “Let it be something in the office that fell to the floor,” he prayed. Thirty minutes passed before someone made a phone call. People from the build- ing were beginning to crowd around the office entrance. The police came to check the corpse. When the door finally opened completely, Yun Hyun-seok was there, head bowed. He looked as if someone had painted his whole body with purple watercolor. In that dark, cramped office, he had hanged himself from the doorknob. He was only 19. Found near his body, in a neat pile, were more than 75 original sijo, a traditional form of short verse, together with diary entries and several farewell letters. For long afterward, Yol was traumatized, angry that such a thing had to happen at his workplace. He wished it were a dream. He blamed himself. Since that tragic spring day in 2003, he and other activists at Solidarity of LGBT Human Rights of Korea have been determined to keep the memory of Yun alive. They hold a service each year on the anniversary of his death. In 2006, they also published Yun’s po- ems and diary entries as a book. The diary entries reveal a month of worsen- ing despair and isolation as Yun threw himself into LGBTQ activist causes as a volunteer worker at Solidarity. In both the diary and in his poems, Yun rebukes the Christians’ fo- menting hate against sexual minorities and the society that condemns them as subhu- man. Determined to struggle on until, as he wrote, his “will to live was reduced to nothing,” he at last gave in, but with the hope, men- tioned again and again in his letters, that his death would somehow come to have meaning for the liberation of the LGBTQ community in Korea. In 2013, Yun’s dream at last took shape when Solidarity created an annual LGBTQ literary award in his name. The Yook Woo Dang Literary Award — named after Yun’s pen name — was launched last year at the annual memorial ceremony. The second award was delivered in April. Groove Korea sat down with Ung (who declined to publish his surname), planner for the Yook Woo Dang Literary Award and active Solidarity member, to discuss Yun, gay teen suicide and the vi- sion behind the new award. Story by Finn berry / Photo and illustration courtesy of Solidarity of lGbT human rights of Korea wrItIng from tHe wreckage Gay rights activist and poet Yun Hyun-seok committed suicide at 19. Solidarity of LGBT Human Rights of Korea aims to prevent others from doing the same Edited by John Rodgers (jmrseoul@gmail.com) INSIGhT