Christian Protesters Outnumber Revelers At Seoul Pride

The Associated Press reports:

Thousands of gay rights supporters marched under heavy police guard in the South Korean capital on Saturday as they celebrated the city’s first major Pride parade in three years after a COVID-19 hiatus.

Police established perimeters to separate them from conservative Christian protesters, also numbering in the thousands, who marched in nearby streets. They held up banners and chanted slogans opposing homosexuality as their leader shouted prayers into a microphone pleading that God “save the Republic of Korea from anti-discrimination legislation.”

Following a standard they’ve maintained for years, the Pride parade’s organizers required photojournalists to take pictures of participants from the “farthest possible” distance and obtain the consent of every individual whose faces are identifiable in photos — a measure to protect participants from backlash as their images may circulate on the internet.

Today Online reports:

Dubbed Seoul Queer Culture Festival, about 13,000 people were estimated to have participated as of about 3pm local time, Yonhap reported.

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Philip Goldberg, attended the festival to show his support. “To express the strong commitment of the United States to ending discrimination wherever it occurs and ensuring that everyone is treated with respect and humanity, we simply cannot leave any of you behind,” Goldberg told the crowd.

Across the road from the festival, taking place in Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall, the protest rally had at least 15,000 participants, according to Yonhap.

Christian protesters have disrupted the event multiple times in recent years.