Hoso 호소

A Korean American Alternative Drag Queen (a drag queen that doesn’t conform to mainstream drag trends and aesthetics), Hoso is someone that the South Korean LGBTGIA+ community looks up to as one of the most important figureheads of today’s movement. YEOJA sat down with Hoso to talk about drag and identifying as queer in a society where homosexuality is still such a taboo issue.

Hoso, when did you first realise that you were interested in dressing in a non-conformist way? Did this realisation coincide with the experimentation of your sexuality?
Hoso Terra Toma: I think it’s a combination of myself as a person just being a natural nonconformist and the social pressure that’s put on queer people – and then pushing that even further. I’ve always liked to dress weirdly and with me being queer and all, obviously the unpleasant looks were doubled. When this happens to queer people it usually goes one of two ways: they either “norm up” their style in shame or they say ‘you can all eat shit and watch me slay’. I’m sure you can guess which way I went.

Was there a pivotal moment for you when you decided you wanted to be a performer, rather than expressing yourself in drag privately?
Hoso Terra Toma: A very specific moment was when I watched the legendary performer and Dragula contestant Evah Destruction’s performance video of “That Laughing Track”. The energy she exuded on stage, seeing the shock on other peoples faces, and the moment she turned herself completely into a character was pure perfection for me and it made me want to be the same way. 

As a Korean American, have you faced prejudice in either Korea or America for expressing yourself?
Hoso Terra Toma: I am a person who is well-versed in both cultures; strangely enough in most cases it works against me and doesn’t allow me to fit in with either of these communities. So I always had to find my community and people who I felt comfortable fully being myself with. I have very little patience when it comes to being the odd one out in the room.

You have quite a strong American accent, so I am assuming you grew up in the US and if that is the case when and why did you decide to move to Korea?
Hoso Terra Toma: I do realize I sound very Caucasian and it’s a curse I’ve decided to bear (jk), but in all seriousness, I’d say I’m just as fluent in Korean as I am in English. For most of my life, I was very much more fluent in Korean than I was in English. I’ve spent more time here in Korea but right now since I’m in a community where I mostly speak English, it helped me out a lot in terms of becoming more fluent with my speech patterns. I went back and forth a lot as a child so I wouldn’t even specify one country as my “home”, to be honest.

Your drag style is very unique. For people that were introduced to the drag scene through programs such as Ru Paul’s Drag Race, the horror aesthetic is not one that people have been as exposed to. This aesthetic is also quite popular in Visual Kei (a subculture originating from Japan). Is there possibly a cultural element that separates Eastern drag from Western drag, and is the horror aesthetic one of them? Essentially, what inspires your gruesome looks and why do you think there is an under-representation of drag queens/kings with a similar style?
Hoso Terra Toma: Well, to be honest, I was absolutely one of the people who were introduced to drag through Ru Paul’s Drag Race. When Korean-American drag performer and a legendary makeup artist KimChi walked the stage on Drag Race, that’s when I really started to get into it. But even then, I felt a disconnect there as if I didn’t fully see myself doing what the gxrls on the show were doing. 

Then, I discovered the first season of Dragula and it just clicked for me. I saw all these amazing alternative performers that made sense with my love for weird and nonconformist ways, and for the first time, I thought I wanted to be like them. 
I’ve always had a thing for dress up, so much so that I was a cosplayer for the longest time. My passion for the macabre art played a big part in my drag. As far as representation goes, it has been getting better with shows like Dragula undeniably paving the way and Drag Race bringing in alternative performers time to time, but even then, countless drag artists who are in between or beyond the aesthetics that the mainstream media considers “drag”, are being mistreated and devalued. We have a long way to go and we have to keep being unapologetically queer and out of the norm to be seen and heard.

Also, regarding your question relating to the differences between Eastern and Western drag, I would say that the horror and alternative aesthetic is still very niche within the Eastern drag community in general. Western drag is absolutely friendlier towards and accepting of alternative drag, just for the simple fact that Western drag is much bigger in terms of quantity and scope. Because of that, it’s been easier for alternative drag artists to form a community of their own in the Western scene.

Although you mainly focus on horror-inspired aesthetics you also occasionally dress more femininely and paint your face using traditional make-up techniques. How do you decide which look to settle on before performing?
Hoso Terra Toma: I like to play with how I represent myself and twist whatever I feel like people would expect from me. The whole point of my drag is to get people to be on the edge of their seats and challenge their idea of what I should dress or present myself as. I don’t want to be predictable ever, hence why I want to play with every aesthetic under the moon [sic] possible.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks occurred in a gay nightclub in the famous foreigner district of Seoul, Itaewon. Do you think that the repercussions have affected the LGBTQIA+ and non-Korean community living in Korea as a result?
Hoso Terra Toma: Oh absolutely. Even though it was revealed that the outbreaks were happening all over the town at the same time including straight clubs, the infections at the gay clubs were reported first, so the blame went to the gays. It doesn’t help that the media took notice of the pre-existing prejudice against the Korean queer community, and used that to tear   our communities’ names apart every chance they got to. As a result, we were to blame for a while.

In today’s climate, there is such a divide between people who stand up for, and are advocates for, LGBTQIA+ rights and race issues and those that aren’t. Drag queens have always been known to be passionate spokesfolx regarding such topics. Therefore, do you view drag as a political movement?
 Hoso Terra Toma: All drag is political, regardless of the artist’s intentions or awareness level. It is inherently political in a sense that drag breaks the social expectations of what you should present yourself as, and therefore puts you in the position of a traitor in the eyes of society. And yes, this applies for every type of drag. Some people like to use this as an excuse to bash fem drag performers who are cis-gender women or vice versa, however, where in the world could you see cis-gender women walking down the street in full clown face, stacked wigs, a costume and still be seen as a regular pedestrian? Drag as an art form has come to a point where everyone who participates in it is seen as being radically queer.

Drag is an art form which a lot of members within the LGBTQIA+ community use to express their true selves, their fantasies and their versions of an alternative reality. With this in mind, why do you think that it’s more acceptable for a man to become a drag queen than a womxn to become a drag king?
Hoso Terra Toma: I mean there’s still a problem with misogyny, right? Even if it’s the most punk thing, and the most “outsider” environment, there’s always going to be the most privileged and the most powerful in the scene. That’s not going to change unless it’s like a paradise, you know? So, cis gay men are admittedly the most powerful in the scene. 

Drag itself was founded and developed by some of the most powerful trans womxn (bitter betty, sasha colby) AFAB (assigned female/male at birth) performers (shanita bump, venus envy, creme fatale), drag kings (landon cider, spokey van dykey, tenderonni), and non-binary performers (hollow eve and myself). Still, the cis gay men performers – and I’m not shitting on them – are the ones that are getting the credit and the most visibility. Look at Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Ru Paul is usually only interested in getting the most cis gay white men, from what you see represented on the show. 

There is also a lack of visibility for womxn of colour, even though these are the folx that paved the way for the scene to develop in the first place. At the end of the day, drag is an art form for rebels. It’s a place for people to say “fuck you” to gender stereotypes and gender norms. A place to look heteronormativity and society in their faces and give a middle finger to the idea of gender because it’s all fake. For drag to have all these rules like: you have to be this tall, you have to have padding, you have to tuck, you have to be a man – it goes against the very idea of what makes drag, drag. So yeah, it’s a very simple yet sad fact that the current queer community is dominated by cis gay men and unfortunately both misogyny and transphobia thrive within this community.

In an ideal world, what would drag look like to you?
Hoso Terra Toma: In my ideal world, gender would be no more and the concept would be meaningless and useless. If we continue practising the artform we do now, then, I guess it wouldn’t be considered “drag” anymore, just elaborate theatre art.  A world without gender is very much still a fairytale idea, so I guess we will all be freakshow clowns for a bit longer. Lol.

What do you wish people outside of the LGBTQIA+ community knew or considered about drag before judging those involved? 
Hoso Terra Toma: They should know that it’s an art form that is very well developed, the current product of which has evolved over a long time. Drag has also moved forward from what it used to be perceived as, even within the drag community itself, and the term is now almost a blanket expression for a lot of different genres of queer performance art. For those that are interested in learning more about drag performance culture, they shouldn’t try so hard to fit it in a box; that way they may be able to understand it more easily.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering drag as a profession? Or, perhaps, someone who enjoys the art form but doesn’t know how to become more involved in the community?
Hoso Terra Toma: Just start doing it! That’s the only way you can get a head start, because most of the time people want to do it but end up not doing it because they don’t know where to start. Wherever you are starting, even if it’s just trying to copy someone else’s makeup from a Youtube tutorial, you should just start and see where that leads you.

As mentioned, Ru Paul’s Drag Race is now so popular that almost everyone has heard of it. Can you recommend any other shows to people who want to expand their knowledge of the scene? 
Hoso Terra Toma: The Boulet Brothers Dragula! For those of you who don’t know, Dragula is a drag reality competition program now streaming on Netflix (US and European) which focuses on drag artists who are alternative and punk. There’s lots of blood, lots of macabre and it’s lots of fun. Also, try finding out about drag artists through local live drag shows or Instagram!

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Images provided by Hoso. To follow Hoso on Instagram, click here. For more artist interviews, click here.