Translation: Cheering on Korea's LGBT Population- Flash Flood's Acceptance Speech

This recent article in Huffington Post Korea caught my eye. It is just a quick piece on singer Flash Flood Darlings who recently came out as homosexual in a very public space. 

Flash Flood Darlings is a singer who debuted in 2014 with Plugged - At Neo's. On the 29th of February in the 13th Korean Music Awards he received the top award Dance and Electronic Award. On this day, he received the award for his song which he presented in March of 2015: Star (별). According to a NewsN report, he explained the context for his song.

This song is about my childhood and coming out to myself. I knew from a young age that I was gay. But because of other's prejudices, it became very difficult. People thought and talked about homosexuals, lesbians, and queer people as strange. But of course that is not the truth.

As a child, if someone would have come up to me and said 'it (homosexuality) isn't strange', I think it would have been very helpful. With this opportunity, I would like to speak to all of the young queer people out there. All of you, you are not wrongly made or strange people. You are beautiful. Thank you.

Flash Flood Darlings has already talked about his homosexuality in a number of interviews. In March of 2015, in an interview with Huffington Post Korea, he talked about how he ended up coming to Korea from New Zealand.

I'm curious. How did you end up in Korea?

In some ways it is deeply connected to my boyfriend of ten years. We were in an out of a relationship roaming around between New Zealand, Australia and Thailand and ended up coming to Korea three years ago. During that whirlwind, I studied sound engineering in Thailand for about a year and it became an opportunity to start making music in Korea. 

When you followed your boyfriend to Korea, what were you doing?

Truthfully when I first game to Korea for the first couple of months I didn't know what I was going to do. I couldn't make any friends and there was really nothing for me to do. All day I was just at home waiting for my boyfriend to come back from work. At that time, I wrote my song "Waiting". At that time, I kept thinking 'What will I do with my life?' and I had a lot of nightmares. I was in a really small one-room apartment on the 16th floor and the nightmares were to the extent that I was drawn toward the window. 

Furthermore, in a July interview with Hankyoreh, he stated that he had no thoughts of revealing his sexuality or being involved in the music industry. 

In New Zealand, same sex marriage is legal and they don't interfere in it with school, so I didn't really think about it as a human rights problem. However, when I came to Korea I began to really acknowledge the fact that I was gay. I began to feel a sense of duty toward those who faced discrimination. I am not sure how helpful it can be, but I found that it was important to be out publicly and be active.