Things are much the same in Korea. One 40-year-old crossdresser, only identified as Kim, said, “Since childhood, I’ve been unable to stand the expectation and repression that demands masculinity of me. When I dress like a woman, I feel free from that repression.”

Prof. Bae Eun-kyung of Seoul National University’s Department of Sociology says some men “feel frustrated by the clear division of roles between men and women in society. In some cases, such men relieve stress by wearing women’s clothes.” According to Prof. Park Ki-soo of Hanyang University, “In the late 1990s, gender-blind unisex fashion was a trend. We should understand crossdressers as expressing themselves with unique fashion rather than treating them as mentally ill people.”

There has been a long history of men wearing women’s clothes. In some cultures, male religious figures dressed like women because people regarded a person who had both masculine and feminine aspects as a perfect human being. Prof. Jeon Kyung-soo of Seoul National University points out that many Native American tribes including the Navajo had male shamans dressed in female attire. In the Middle Ages, men began to dress like women to pursue personal taste and transgress customs.

In many countries, including England until the Restoration, women were not allowed on stage, so male actors dressed up in women’s clothes to play the female parts. The same was true in Korea, where a prime example is the troupes of traveling players called Namsadang, and in China the cast of Beijing opera. Of late, crossdressers have more freely expressed their taste: on YouTube, there are some 14,000 video clips showing crossdressers in the act.

(englishnews@chosun.com )