SEOUL — Samsung and Google have banned popular gay social networking programs from their app stores in South Korea, where LGBT activists are facing increasing attempts by government and conservative activists to silence them.
Samsung, one of South Korea’s largest business conglomerates and the largest maker of smartphones worldwide, rejected an application from the gay hookup app Hornet to be listed in its app store in 2013.
In a memo sent from Samsung to Hornet’s CEO and shared with BuzzFeed News, Samsung said the app could not be listed because, “due to the local moral values or laws, content containing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi sexual, Transgender) is not allowed” in places like the Middle East, parts of east and south Asia, and LGBT-friendly places like the U.S. and the Nordic countries.
Samsung spokesperson Kelly Yeo confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the company does limit LGBT content on a country-by-country basis, but said it now does so based on “local laws and customs” instead of “local moral values or laws” and that Samsung is “continuing to update our policies.”