Sexual Politics and Judicial Debates on the ‘Transsexual’ Legal Category in Post-1990s South Korea

• In Event: Sociology of Law Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Sociology of Law Section Roundtables: Table 3 — Gender, Sexuality, and Legal Categories

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the expansion of the transnational human rights regime and the institutionalization of LGBTQ+ activism in South Korea have shaped the legal governance of gender and sexuality. Within this context, transgender individuals increasingly sought gender rectification in official documents, and in 2006, the legal category of Sungjunhwanja (“Transsexual”) was formally established under specific judicial conditions. This study critically examines the socio-historical trajectory of the “Transsexual” legal category through an analysis of South Korean court judgments from 1990 to 2018 retrieved using the keywords "Sungjunhwanja" (Transsexual) and related terms. It investigates how the category has been constructed, negotiated, and maintained through judicial debates within the broader field of sexual politics.

The findings reveal four major dynamics. First, judicial authorities repositioned selectively recognized transgender individuals within the existing binary gender order, particularly through rulings concerning rape, marital status, and parental status, thereby reinforcing heteronormative family norms. Second, the judicial domain functioned to delimit the citizenship rights of “Transsexuals,” especially in cases related to mandatory military service and criminal law, where pathologizing narratives of “sexual identity disorder” were mobilized. Third, the reclassification of “Transsexual” individuals reproduced gender hierarchies by situating both transgender individuals and women within the same subordinated logic of legal recognition, thereby reinforcing discriminatory structures that governed them as jointly marginalized subjects. Fourth, although human rights discourse was frequently invoked in judicial reasoning, it often operated as a rhetorical device that sustained rather than transformed prevailing gender norms.

By foregrounding the judicial sphere as a site where contradictory and non-linear mechanisms of legal power operate, this study demonstrates that the “Transsexual” legal category in Korea is not a neutral descriptor but a historically contingent product of sexual politics. The analysis contributes to critical legal scholarship and transgender feminism by illuminating the flexible yet regulatory character of legal power in shaping gendered citizenship.

Author

• Minhyung Kang, Boston University