Legal Acknowledgement on Transgender accord with Public Well-Being

In the midst of staggering interest in transgender with the appearance of entertainer Ha Ri-Soo, an incumbent judge maintained that if transition of gender is accomplished successfully enough to receive the recognition from general people, the legal acknowledgement on transgender will accord with the public well-being as well as the humanitarianism.

Judge Moon Yoo-Seok (32) at Gangreung branch of the Chuncheon district court said in his research paper `Gender of Transgender-Operated Persons`, ``As long as there are transgender people in our society, the legal indifference to them rather brought about the incessant confusions in education, military service obligation, marriage, employment, working life, etc.``

In the same vein, Judge Moon raised an issue against the 5-year-old decision of the supreme court that a transgender person could not be a victim of a rapist because a transgender person could not be regarded as a woman according to the society`s accepted ideas. He maintained that because the social recognition has changed on the sexual minorities such as homosexual and transgender since then, a transgender might be a victim of rape.

And regarding the method to change the gender, Judge Moon said, ``It is most desirable that the rectification of gender is achieved through the legislation. But it may be done by expanding the application range of the current law.``

Meanwhile, the court recently stated that the current law could not allow a transgender person to change his/her gender in the family record.

Kyung In-Soo sunghyun@donga.com