Statue of Queen’s Freddie Mercury erected in South Korea after eight years of lobbying

For eight years, he stood his ground and campaigned fiercely. Today, Baek Soon-Yeob, a South Korean businessman fan of Queen, has finally realized his dream: to erect a life-size statue of Freddie Mercury, the second in the world, on the tourist island of Jeju where he is from.

1.77 meters high, the bronze statue of the singer raising his fist was unveiled on the seaside on Thursday. It cost Mr. Baek 50 million won (37,000 euros).

When he was a teenager, Baek Soon-yeob, 57, used to listen to pirated copies of Freddie Mercury, the singer of Queen who died of complications from AIDS in 1991.

At that time, in the 1970s, the music of the British rock band, which enjoyed enormous popularity in South Korea, was prohibited there. Military dictator Park Chung-hee’s regime also banned men from growing their hair.

The songs of Freddie Mercury “helped me move forward, despite all the obstacles in my way“, recalls Mr. Baek. Including the obstacles to erect this statue. “I sent the first emails in 2014 asking for the rights“, he explains. He repeated this request every month to Queen, but received no response for seven years.

Finally, in 2020, members of the group and its production company agreed to meet him in Seoul, on the occasion of Queen’s first concert in South Korea. This concert was organized after the phenomenal success in 2018 of Bohemian Raphsodythe fictionalized biopic of Freddie Mercury, seen by ten million viewers in South Korea, or one fifth of the population.

Although legal, homosexuality remains largely taboo in South Korea. Local television station SBS was criticized last year for cutting a scene from Bohemian Raphsody in which actor Rami Malek kisses a man (the film was not censored when it was released). Mr Baek said he hopes the statue will help”people who criticize sexual minorities to reconsider their views“.

The statue of Mercury commissioned by Baek is only the second in the world to be officially approved by the Queen label. The other is in Montreux, Switzerland, where the singer lived and had recorded his albums.