*Editor's note: This article is from the ‘Reconstructing Residences’ series, which highlights problems of dwellings, abodes, and residences from diverse perspectives. It is conducted with the support of the Press Promotion Fund of the Korea Press Foundation.

 

When I received the suggestion to write about the meaning of ‘home’, several memories from my past came to mind. To me, home is a place where I can truly relax; a place where I can keep my personal belongings and necessities without fear and in peace.

 

But I’m sure that to some people, my simplistic definition of home being somewhere to keep my things is no doubt an odd one.

 

▲ My AirBnB-style room. Decorated entirely by yours truly. ©Edhi

The need for a space of my own

 

I was around twenty-five when I made the decision to transition, or change the gender I was assigned at birth to match my gender identity. The decision was followed by an endless series of dilemmas and worries. And when I finally decided that I had to go through with transitioning, I realized at the same time that I would have to move out.

 

There were things that I felt I wanted and needed to help me, as a transgender woman, present my gender, like underwear, skirts, make-up and so on. But in the eyes of my parents, it would be unacceptable for their ‘son’ to possess such items. I had made one of the biggest decisions of my life, but I was still plagued with what might seem like trivial worries to other people. Whether that new item that I’d bought would be allowed at home. Whether I’d need to hide it away again from my parents, and when I did, whether they’d found it.

 

I was living in a home where I could not be myself. I needed a space where I could feel comfortable; where I wouldn’t have to worry about what clothes I had in my closet.

 

It was autumn of 2013. Even though I hadn’t found a job yet, I told my parents I needed to live in Seoul for work, and asked if I could borrow some money that I’d pay back later. And so, that year I found my first real home in Itaewon. [Translator's note: Itaewon is a district in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. It is known as Seoul's international district and is home to many expats and military personnel in South Korea.]

 

Why Itaewon? To be honest, I didn’t really consider any other options. When I’d been trying to figure out my gender identity, all the trans community meetings that I’d attended had been in Itaewon. All the clubs that I’d followed my gay friends to had been in Itaewon. Itaewon had been the place where I could meet my true self; where I could feel safe. This was the place where I first accepted that I could live and identify as transgender, and where I could meet people who knew the real me and accepted me for who I was.

 

▲ My companions who support me in times of loneliness - my dog Yeoli, my plants, and my photos. ©Edhi

Could I have lived as a trans woman and interacted comfortably with my neighbors in my old home with my parents? Could I have worn the clothes that I wanted to wear? In Itaewon, I could. In this neighborhood, I could live like an actual person, and feel a genuine sense of belonging and peace.

 

I had to find an apartment in Itaewon with just 5 million won. And this had to cover not only the security deposit but also other expenses like the moving fee, the real estate fee, furniture and so on. I was unemployed then - to be honest, my gender identity had made getting a regular job or any kind of service job extremely difficult.

 

Several times when I’d gone to interviews I’d heard the same thing: “We can’t really hire you for a service position... you’ll make people feel uncomfortable.” The only kind of employment I could find that accepted my situation was low-paid, part-time work. In order to support my livelihood, the pressure was on to find a place with low rent.

 

The apartment that I ended up getting was in a very old building. It was in the basement. You had to wear shoes to go out to the bathroom, and one of the rooms had a black wall from water damage. So I made a deal with the landlord. I would pay for the various repairs the place needed, and in exchange, I would pay a smaller deposit of 2 million won and 200,000 a month in rent, instead of the original 4 million and 400,000. And so I started my new life in my new home armed only with a single mattress.

 

The neighborhood makes a house a home

 

In that old building, there was a shaman living on the basement floor with me. There was a one-hundred-year-old church right next door, and a mosque, a primary school and another one-hundred-year-cathedral all within walking distance. There were all kinds of foreigners with different skin colors, advertisements written in foreign languages, tattoos artists, people with the most unusual fashion styles and people who identified as LGBTQ+, like me. The only type of people that you’d struggle to find were newlyweds pushing buggies or the standard 4-person nuclear family unit. For whatever reason, I found I was more comfortable here in this kind of environment.

 

Although I had begun transitioning and living alone, there were still a lot of things I had left to attempt that required practice and courage. Itaewon offered so many diverse and unique opportunities that I found myself saying that I too would have to try them - and here, I found that I actually could. Before moving to Itaewon I had never gone beyond my front door with lipstick on. One time I’d gathered all my courage and applied a tiny bit of eyeliner, but I didn’t last more than two hours outside. I was too scared that people would look at me like I was some kind of monster. But here in Itaewon, by putting one foot in front of the other, I was able to leave my house wearing makeup. I remember one time when I slowly, slowly took the ten-minute walk from my house to Itaewon Subway Station. Although I was hesitant the whole way, I didn’t feel that same sense of fear and danger from before. I felt that I could do it: I could go outside. It was okay. Itaewon was the place where I was able to take these first steps.

 

▲ Looking out across a quieter ‘Homo Hill’ (completely different between weekdays and the weekend) gives me a sense of calm. ©Edhi

Making a house a home isn’t something that happens just in one building. The surrounding neighborhood, too, can transform a house into a safe and welcoming place.

 

To reiterate what everybody already knows about Itaewon - there are lots of places here popular with the LGBTQ+ community. But this doesn’t just mean gay bars. There are several queer cafes and restaurants where you can comfortably chat away with anyone. These places aren’t technically queer spaces but they’re still so popular with the LGBTQ+ community that the owners aren’t surprised to see us. There is a sense of safety here - a hidden reassurance that you won’t be subjected to any kind of hate or demands to ‘get the gays out’.

 

It was maybe this kind of environment that allowed me and my neighbors to be comfortable with one another. I actually have a lot of funny memories from my time living in Itaewon. In one attempt to cut down on rent, I moved in with another friend who also identifies as a trans woman. One time, we stayed up all night talking and having fun. We must have been a bit loud, because the next day, when I was throwing out my rubbish the man who lived in the flat above approached me. “Hey miss, I guess you had a fun night last night with your boyfriend, huh?” But it’d just been us two girls. I remember my friend and I, later, accusing each other of being the other’s boyfriend and laughing.

 

On one occasion, though, there was some gossip about us two girls who lived together on the first floor; on whether we were a couple or just good friends. Some people even directly asked me if we were a couple. When I told them we were just friends and that my boyfriend also occasionally came by, they usually let it go.

 

Peace of mind from a place called Itaewon

 

After a few years passed, I tried living in another area called Uidong, with a roommate who identifies as gay. When we were looking for a place, the one question we got the most from the real estate agent and landlords was ”Are you two a newly married couple?” If we answered “no”, we’d suddenly get a strong vibe that we wouldn’t be able to rent the flat, especially as both of us were in our thirties. I was afraid what they might think of us, as two people of the opposite gender who were not married yet wanted to live together. Even once we did move into a place, from day 1 our neighbors referred to our home as the ‘newlyweds’ place’ and would greet me in the morning with pleasantries such as ‘Has your husband already left for work?’

 

Even when I’d been living in Itaewon there’d been people who were curious about my gender and had tried guessing at my relationships. But in Uidong, I was weighed down by the conviction that the people here had never seen someone like me before. I was constantly nervous and self-conscious from the moment I stepped out of my front door. I would consciously try to change my voice; when I went outside to throw out my rubbish I deliberately kept my head down low and wore baggy clothes that wouldn’t bring any kind of attention to my body. I was scared of the people living next door to me, on the floor up from me, the floor down from me. I was scared that they would look at me and think in confusion, ‘What exactly is that person...?’ The desire I’d had in Itaewon to chat with my neighbors completely vanished.

 

▲ Taking a walk around the neighborhood helps me to de-stress. Being in Itaewon, the Han River is close by. ©Edhi

In Itaewon, there had also been less need for me to prove myself to people in my daily life to get by. I remember once when I went to a real estate agent in Itaewon and handed them my ID [which lists my assigned, incorrect gender]. The real estate agent said to me, “Ah, a lot of those kinds of people live in this neighborhood,” and advocated for me to the landlord. If it was any other area besides Itaewon, I would have had to struggle to try and explain myself. There’s actually a lot of times in life where we need to show our ID cards: when signing a contract for a house, when submitting documents related to military service, even when we get new phones or set up internet service. I always have the necessary documents to ‘prove myself’ with me, such as my psychiatric medical certificate, my medical records, and hormone records. Still, in these moments, typically I try to bear out the awkwardness in silence and pray for it all to quickly be over.

 

Say when a delivery arrives. There are some people who are really embarrassed when the delivery man asks for XX person and tells them that if they are not XX, then they can’t sign for the delivery. But in Itaewon, there are more people who casually respond, “Ah don’t worry, there are lots of people like us here,” and sign as the indicated female recipient. I have trans friends living in different areas who say that when they need to go to the bank for whatever reason, they choose to come all the way to Itaewon. All because of the mental stress they get from trying to prove who they are to receive essential everyday services. Identification is meant to be just that - simply identifying who you are - but the stigma surrounding trans people here makes these kinds of situations continually challenging.

 

The same is also true if I want to try and protect myself. Once I found myself in a dangerous situation when some person followed me as I walked home alone and then kept knocking on my door. I reported the incident to the police, and later, I was filling in my written statement when I came to the section asking for my gender and national ID number [which also indicates gender]. When I told the police about my gender identity, they casually said, “Oh, you can just add it here like this,” and moved on as if it was nothing. If it had been anywhere other than Itaewon, this kind of situation could have been frightening for me. But here, the police treated me in accordance with my true gender and resolved the incident without any complications. 

 

Naturally even here I’m not always 100% at ease. There might be people around who hate people like me. People who look at me strangely. But ultimately, what can they really do? There are others around here that are like me too. These kinds of thoughts reassure me a little. I could maybe find a cheaper place in a different neighborhood, but to be honest, I can’t help but wonder if I’d end up feeling like one of the first foreigners to land on Korean soil during the Heungseon Daewongun era.[Translator's note: Heungseon Daewongun was the title of Yi Ha-eung, regent of Joseon (Korea) during the minority of Emperor Gojong in the 1860s.] I’d have to explain who I am again to people, and I’d have to explain endless things about me. But actually more than that, I’m worried that I wouldn’t even be given the chance to explain myself. I am honestly concerned that I wouldn’t be able to survive anywhere else besides Itaewon.

 

So even though my apartment is old, and on a hill, and even though I tried living in a different neighborhood for a while too, for these reasons I find that I always end up back here.  Because even if people misgender me, I feel comfort in knowing that there are other people like me here. Here, I have a home which I can leave and return to in the appearance that I want to present. Where people like me also live their lives, and us ‘strange’ and ‘diverse’ people coexist peacefully together. This is why from the age of twenty-five, I have continued to live my life here.

 

▲ My impressive(?!) cafe-style living room for friends that come to visit. (Credit: Edhi)

The home I want to live in…?

 

To conclude, I decided to try imagining the home that I’d like to live in the future.

 

Firstly, I’d like three bedrooms. One room would have just a bed and nothing else, to sleep peacefully in without any distractions or worries. The second room, I’d fill with all my belongings, including the clothes and the accessories that I want and the books that I want to read. The last room would be a space where my friends could come and stay whenever they wanted. I’d like for my home to have wide windows looking out across the whole neighborhood, with my own rooftop space with a little house for my dog Yeoli. There would be a large living area with a big table, where my friends could come for dinner and hang out at the weekends. Of course, as of now I’ve never lived in a house like this before. My personal best so far has been living in a single room stuffed with my belongings. 

 

Who would I live with? I guess that my dream would be living in this home with somebody that I love. But right now, in our society the ongoing stigma against non-cisgender identities means that I haven’t met someone yet that could really understand and empathize with the way I live. So, I’m not too confident yet about a future home with a partner.

 

So instead, another dream of mine would be to have nice neighbors. Neighbors who would greet me with a smile, who share their leftover banchan [side dishes] with me without a second thought, who would offer a helping hand to me if I ever needed it. Of course, now that I live in this big city of Seoul and not my past home of Namyangju in Gyeonggi-do, these fancies might be just idealistic dreams. But still, I sometimes wonder how it would feel to be accepted and have a sense of belonging outside of the queer community, in a neighborhood as one of the locals. In a place where gender identity only makes up part of who a person is, and where different kinds of people come together and can feel a sense of belonging on the basis of being a resident of that neighborhood. Where it is a given that nobody should feel uncomfortable using services in public facilities for identifying as non-cis.

 

My final dream for my future home would be a front garden, where I could plant flowers and have a small outside table for chatting with my neighbors over coffee.

 

▲ For a future where queer people, people with disabilities, immigrants, foreigners and all kinds of diverse people co-exist peacefully as neighbors.  ©Ilda

Although here I have talked about the good aspects of living in Itaewon, these things that I like about it simultaneously demonstrate how difficult it is for queer people like me to live in safety in any other area. I hope that we see more areas like Itaewon emerge in the future. Actually, I hope that all areas become like Itaewon in the future. That we see neighborhoods with queer people, people with disabilities, immigrants, foreigners, and all different kinds of diverse people living together. I hope for future neighborhoods where not only can we see people from all walks of life coexisting together, but where this is seen as natural. [Translated by: Chloe Sherliker]

 

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/8774 (Published: Jul. 7, 2020)

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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