Tens of thousands of people have poured into central Seoul to celebrate the city’s annual queer culture festival, filling the streets with rainbow flags and drumming troupes in one of Asia’s largest Pride gatherings.

“I only tell friends who I think can accept it,” said Lee Seo-hee, a university student from Seoul who identifies as bisexual. “It doesn’t feel like a completely safe society.”

But little could dampen the mood on Saturday, despite LGBTQ+ people in South Korea remaining without basic legal protections, and a comprehensive anti-discrimination law blocked in parliament for nearly two decades.

On a blazing sunny day, the mood was jubilant and unguarded.

A group of parents of LGBTQ+ children offered free hugs to attendees, some of whom were in tears. Many cannot come out to their own families in a society where homosexuality, while not illegal, remains widely stigmatised.

Under Seoul’s mayor, Oh Se-hoon – who has publicly said he “cannot support homosexuality” and that holding Pride at the city’s main square is “not desirable” – Seoul Plaza has been off limits to the festival for the past four years. The square had been the festival’s home for nearly a decade. The conservative mayor was re-elected earlier this month.

Booths lined the festival grounds in another location instead, representing civil society groups, university clubs and diplomatic missions including the British embassy.

“This is the one time of year people feel they can truly show who they are,” said Jay Park, a film-maker and frequent attender. “Until a few years ago, many came covering themselves up, afraid of being seen.”

Days earlier a Seoul court had offered a rare step forward, ruling that a same-sex couple who had shared their lives and finances constituted a protected legal union, even as same-sex marriage is not legally recognised in South Korea.

South Korea’s conservative Protestants represent only a fifth of the population in a country where most people follow no religion. Yet they have wielded huge influence, in large part responsible for blocking a comprehensive anti-discrimination law – a political third rail that would protect LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities and racial minorities.

Last month the government quietly committed to laying the groundwork for such a law, listing it among national policy tasks of President Lee Jae Myung’s administration.

“Even Korean companies that sponsor Pride abroad keep their mouths shut about LGBTQ+ rights in Korea,” said Heezy Yang, a Seoul-based queer artist and activist.

South Korean pop culture exported queerness to the world through films, music videos and dramas, he said, while the country silenced it at home.

Nearby, a crowd of counter-protesters held a rival rally, with trucks blasting hymns and banners declaring homosexuality a sin.

“Korean politicians have always treated minority issues as an afterthought, people not worth their votes,” Park said. “Stop pretending we don’t exist. Pass the anti-discrimination law.”