Out in the World: South Korea's highest court delivers groundbreaking decision for gay soldiers
The Supreme Court of South Korea has tossed out the military court conviction of two gay soldiers for having consensual sex outside of military facilities.The court's panel of 13 justices ruled April 21 the military's case stretched the country's military sodomy law and sent the case back to the High Court for Armed Forces.Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su said the justices concluded that the widely criticized 1962 Military Criminal Act's Article 92-6 law should not be applied to consensual sex between male service members outside of military facilities during off-duty hours, reported the Associated Press.The law prohibits members of the military from engaging in same-sex conduct in the country's predominantly male military and carries a two-year prison sentence.Homosexuality is decriminalized in South Korea for civilians.The case wasn't the first time the high court had received complaints about the law.
At least three different times the court upheld the military law, most recently in 2016, AP reported.Amnesty International East Asia researcher Boram Jang called the military's law a longtime "shocking violation of human rights" in an email statement to the Jurist, a legal news site operated in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh."Today's ruling should pave the way for military personnel to freely live their lives without the threat of prosecution," Jang wrote.Amnesty International reported on the destructive impact of criminalizing LGBTQ South Korean soldiers' serving in the military in its 2019 report, "Serving in Silence: LGBTI People in South Korea's Military."Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su said that he recognized that society and time have changed ideas on what "constitutes as indecency.""The view that sexual.
