Hwi
Maeng

My thesis explains how gay men in Itaewon acquire exclusive membership on the basis of their shared sexuality and form relationships with others so as to give content to their sense of self as gay. Drawing on eighteen months of participant observation and in-depth interviews, I argue that Gay Hill operates as a liminal space in which the ordinary relationship between gender, sexuality, and social identity is temporarily loosened and reorganized. Rather than treating gender simply as an identity category, the thesis shows how gendered signs—styles of speech, gesture, dress, bodily comportment, and especially kki—become a shared semiotic repertoire through which gay men relate to one another. In this sense, gender is partially detached from defining who one “is”. It is instead transformed into a tool through which sexuality can be performed and made socially intelligible. Drag makes this process particularly visible. I argue that drag is neither the straightforward expression of an inner identity nor merely an escape into an artificial persona; through the repeated adoption of a mask, performers experiment with ways of inhabiting gender and the self that can subsequently reshape their bodies, relationships, and self-understandings beyond the stage. Gay Hill therefore emerges not simply as a refuge from heteronormative society, but as a social and material environment in which alternative modes of personhood are collectively rehearsed and invented. The thesis ultimately shows how play and performance can become techniques of self-transformation: one can become otherwise not by uncovering a hidden authentic self, but by repeatedly performing and being recognized as something one was not before.