There’s not a lot of credible info about LGBT rights in the DPRK, but I have found out some things that you may find interesting regarding the subject.

I’m going to start with the things that are not quite positive. Some DPRK publications from like 10 or 20 years ago criticizing the west have derogatory remarks about homosexuality. I’m not going to link them but they do exist. More recent articles criticizng the west do not make mentions of homosexuality, at least not directly. Also same-sex marriage is not legal.

There are no laws on same sex activity in the DPRK.

With regards to tourism, LGBT people have travelled to the DPRK and guess what, they weren’t executed. In this link (around minute 47) a trans man went to the DPRK and the tour guide was concerned about his identity because she heard that women weren’t treated well in the US and asked about it and then the trans guy said it wasn’t because of that, it was his identity and then the tour guide was cool with it.

Doesn’t the DPRK control people by censoring the language so that there are no words for things about sexuality? Nope. (warning: instagram link) A DPRK translation dictionary has the terms “homosexuality, lesbian, transexual, bisexual, gay boy, gay lib (동성련애자해방운동), crossdress, and transvestism.”

DPRK has their own version of planned parenthood called the Family Health Association of Korea, it formerly had a different name. Article 1.4 of their constitution: “The association shall not discriminate on grounds of race, creed, ethnic origin, political belief, backgrounds, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or age…”

There are Korean schools in Japan that teach kids about LGBT. Comrade Kim Jong Un is paying for people to go to these school. I will leave some links below.

https://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2022/12/6-31/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210301071817/http://dareiki.org/2018/09/21/wk-jugyou/ https://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2023/04/24-115/ https://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2025/03/27-226/ (paywalled, I included this to show that they started in 2018 and are still doing it) https://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2025/04/16-149/ (This one shows who is funding the schools)

Also the organization teaches in these schools does meetups for LGBT Koreans living in Japan and I think they are loosely DPRK-affiliated.

Also I remember seeing in the rodong sinmun once that they sent a delegation to the World Federation of Democratic Youth. The WFDY publishes statements like this: https://www.wfdy.org/statements/2023/06/28/we-will-proudly-overthrow-exploitation-and-any-kind-of-oppression/ Although the WFDY also has the communist party of Greece which I’m pretty sure was homophobic so I wouldn’t take this as proof of Workers Party of Korea being pro-LGBT.

If you want more info on this subject I found a post by Korean Friendship League in Brazil: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMqbf2rR1Tl Also I forgot to mention that you will have to translate these, auto translating is good enough for the links I sent

  • GamersOfTheWorld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    251·
    22 days ago

    I think that even the most bigoted, reactionary leader of an AES state is probably infinitely more progressive in most cases on most things than your average liberal citizen in the United States. Which is to say, not wholly bigoted or reactionary at all.

    Even though you have outliers, there are still secondary contradictions with your primary ones, and even if you try to focus your project exclusively on the primary contradiction, you’re going to run into secondary contradictions eventually. Unless you’re a frothing chud pretending to be a communist (which I don’t think AES leaders are in most cases), it’s exceedingly difficult to hold both bigoted and “Liberation for humanity!” outlooks at the same time.

    Is the DPRK perfect? Literally nothing is perfect, so no. Will you receive the “freedoms” of the West like constant floods of transvestigators, TERFs, deadnaming, misgendering, transphobia, homophobia, racism lynching, or anything else? Probably not. Then again, most socialist projects still reckon with the “primary vs. secondary contradictions” thing, which is why you can still see social conservatism in a lot of AES states that have focused on the resolution of the primary contradiction exclusively to the detriment of secondary contradictions.

    Even then, AES states, by nature of being at bare minimum trying to mold themselves into a dictatorship of the proletariet, are actually possible targets for “reform” because they already had a revolution. Then again, I could be missing key things or something, so feel free to correct or contradict me.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      171·
      21 days ago

      I think that even the most bigoted, reactionary leader of an AES state is probably infinitely more progressive in most cases on most things than your average liberal citizen in the United States.

      Simplest example of this is to point at Che and Fidel. Fidel obviously massively improved and Che would’ve gone on the same trajectory had he not died.

      Almost nobody will argue that these two weren’t on the whole clearly more progressive than a US citizen on almost everything outside of their early homophobia.

      • newacctidk [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        14·
        21 days ago

        Che’s only homophobic comment is when he was young, and is arguably more of an off color ribbing of a friend than anything hateful. He very well may have been homophobic until his death, but nothing indicates that being the case in the 20 years between events.

    • TerrificBeanOnOwl [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      19 days ago

      It was from some Reuters thing and I think it was taken some time around 2010 and the location was from the Chinese border I think or it could be the border from South Korea.