Hello and welcome to Queer as Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world and throughout time.

I'm Irene.

I'm Alice.

And I'm Eli.

Today we'll be talking about Huarang, a religious, spiritual and military institution in Silla Dynasty Korea.

Music Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the Waurundri Woiwurong and Banerong-Bun-Worong people of the Kulin Nation,

on whose land we research and record this podcast, we pay our respects

to their elders past and present. They are the keepers of an oral history tradition far older

than this podcast. Content warnings for today's episode include brief references to homophobia,

transphobia and misogyny in both first millennium Korea and in the 20th century.

There's also some discussion of ableism within historical Korean culture.

It also contains mentions of colonization, the colonization of Korea by Japan, and death in war and by drowning.

There's also one brief discussion of suicide.

If you'd prefer not to hear some of that, you can check out any of our other episodes. I'm sure there'll be something there that's appealing to you. Before we get going, I'm going to try and give you a brief summary of what the hua-dang are. I thought that was what this whole whole episode was. We're going to do a brief summary and then a less brief summary. Yeah. That is what we're going to do because every time I tried to introduce this episode, I was like,

this sentence really isn't covering everything that I wanted it to.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, as I said at the top, the Huanong were a military, religious and cultural elite,

comprised of aristocratic young men, so usually in their late

adolescents. They're trained in military skills as well as cultural pastimes, like singing,

poetry, dancing. And they're considered the sort of pinnacle of young masculinity in the

kingdom of Silla, which was one of the kingdoms in the Korean Peninsula during the first millennium. So Scylla is not all of the Korean Peninsula. It's just like a bit. No. I will fill you in on that shortly too. Okay. And only the kingdom of Silla has whora. Nobody else has one. Okay. So do they like kick you out when out when you turn 21, or are we going to get to that?

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