Is there any way to improve sex education in old Korea?

It is always very careful and difficult to talk about sex in Korea. This is because lots of Korean people are  not 100% opened to these kind of topic. When I was young, our culture was even more closed about sex, but now it is gradually changing. Pre-marital sex is used to be a taboo before, but now it is getting quite natural and we often see these stories being discussed on the air.

The Witch Hunt is one of the famous Korean entertainment program that discusses about  love and sex. 

To keep up with the changes to more opened culture, we need a practical sex education. However, the reality of Korean schools are not quite there yet. Those who are controlling over sex education programs are still tabooing 'sex' and keeping all kinds of sexist notions.

The current state of sex education in Korea

Korea is a highly competitive society. So the sex education is considered to be ashamed and relatively less important than studying. Therefore, students learn false gender values from the Internet or bye the peers.

Let's do the sex education later.

Actually, I did not get a proper sex education when I was a student. The only sex education I took was about teaching girls how to use their sanitary pad, and how horrible sexual assault is and how to avoid it. According to the video, talking about 'Sex' was bad, and I should keep myself safe. Some students were sleeping next to each other and some of them were watching comics behind because they were not interested in it. There was no teacher who is in charge of the sex education that the athletic teacher turned on the video and left. That is why nobody was able to concentrate on the education. It was all useless to think about it now.

At high school, there was no official sex education at all. Getting a good score and going to a good college was all that matters for teachers. Nobody was even thinking about giving, or getting a sex education. Then one day, in English class, a native American teacher who was dispatched to our school decided to break this culture, and gave us a lecture in class. In the middle of the class, he suddenly showed us a condom, and said that sexual experience is not a thing that you should be ashamed of, so be comfortable with it, and be contraceptive to take care of each other. My friends and I were we did not know what to do, but he continued to teach. He kindly explained how to use a condom and gave every student a condom as a gift. I still can't forget that moment.

However, if I think about it now, it's not really a shame. Rather, I should have been more involved in class. The reason why my friends and I were so embarrassed at that time is because we have never heard about these from friends, parents, or school teachers. It was natural not to have a boy/girl friend in a high school - so that you can focus on studying-  and I can't imagine hearing lectures about how to use condoms. I think that he could do those things because he really loved the students. I am sure that this kind of sex education will never happen in other schools.

Nobody teaches us why we should be cautious.

One of our team member said that she took a lecture about how to use condoms. However, in that class, they did not tell her what having sex means, or why she should be so cautious. Instead, they just talked about how the condom looks like that she became disgusted. Other team member said that sex education class was actually a self study time, and once they played a bideo about abortion that he felt rejected and had an unrealistic ideas. Of course, when the video is being played back, students were not participating but chatting.

Is teenage sex a social evil that should not happen?

The idea that teenagers should only study.

On average, Koreans have their first sexual experience in their teens. Sex culture has changed a lot and it became more important to express your feelings. However, there is a big generation gap between the people who MAKE textbooks and those who USE textbooks.

Still, teachers at the school thinks that teenage sax is a social evil that should never happen, and being involved in it is an irreversible mistake. This is because there were  predominance of Confucian-based sexism in Korea 30 years ago, that premarital sex was considered as "bad". Even though the time has passed and culture has changed, adults still thinks the same. 

Teenagers, who should be studying, should not dating, and they don't even want to think about teenagers having sex because they are suppose to be 'INNOCENT.' If they happen to know a teenager who has such an experience, they will consider him/her as a "juvenile delinquent". If the teenager gets pregnant, their life will be labeled as a " fail".

Here is the question that we should think about. Is it appropriate to consider being interested in sex in teenage years a bad thing? In fact, we need to look back on ourselves. Actually, we had more interests in sex when we were a teenager. It is not a good idea to keep everything inside especially when it is a natural feeling that all humans have.

Korea Ministry of Education's sex education resources for teacher that provokes a wrong prejudice saying that sexual assaults can happen when you are having unhealthy relationship with your boy/girl friend.

They don't teach the reaon WHY the sexual experience is precious.

Teenage pregnancy occurs in the process of expressing love through sex. This is caused by the lack of education that adults did not teach them a right idea of sex and why the sexual experience is precious. If we had taught them that sex should be accompanied by responsibility, so that they should be cautious, be patient sometimes, and to contravene correctly, there would never have been a chance of making student into a looser.

But still teachers and parents tend to regard sex education as taboo . When two people are kissing in drama, many parents say "Do not look!" Or often you can hear them saying "Break up, right now!" when their child talks about their boy/girl friend. If adults can not stop them by falling in love, they need to come up with more realistic measures to protect the children who are not yet mature from ruining their lives.

Men are active and women are passive

Women should avoid men to prevent sexual abuse.

Two years ago, Korean textbooks on sex education was very controversial as soon as it was published. The notion that women should not let themselves be in such a situation to prevent sexual violence has not yet socially disappeared. Even when the man commits a sexual crime,  the woman has a fault for 'not avoiding' it. Their argument is based on the idea that men are active. Still, most sex education portrays women as passive individuals.

Lots of sex educations are busy explaining how to avoid sex crimes rather then explaining how bad the sex offenders are . It is true that the way to avoid is also important. However, the problem is that many textbooks and videos teaches us that we should say "No!" and resist vigorously. It is also pointless to say that women should avoid wearing revealing clothes. If the cloth was too revealing that it stimulated the sex drive of the offenders, shouldn't the offenders be patient? The strong tendency of downsizing the offender 's mistakes is the reality of Korea's sexual education. Following is the current status of Korean sex education discussed online:

"Sexual assault is a complex crime, that it is not always a good idea to resist violently. If you resist harshly, there could be a possibility that offenders give up and run away, but if they have a weapon, there are also a possibility to be killed. Since we are teaching that victims should cope well with the situation, the wide spread of wrong perception trough victims, such as "If you don't want it, you would have resisted more violently, why would you kept still? Do you have anything to say about being sexually assaulted while you walked around with those revealing clothes?" even in the text books. Most of the women's illustrations in the textbooks includes skirts and aprons, and they consider that sexual assault happens because of cropped t-shirt and short skirts. This kind of discriminatory thinking can be a big problem because it leads to an actual sexual violence or second harm.  

(Source: Tree Wiki Sex Education Section)

Men are like wolves struck by sexual desire.

Let's take a real example from out textbook. The following page is about how we prevent sexual violence when you are alone with your friend of the opposite sex at home. Guess what was the solution. Solutions was "Not making certain situation."

A textbook article telling you not to be alone with the friend of opposite sex. The idea that a man can not be tolerate are behind it. (They actually can!)

Yes. To prevent sexual violence, you should not be alone at home with your friend. It is like a pun. Then do we always have to stay home with our parents? Is it a mistake to make a situation like that? Men and women will both feel bad about this saying that men are animals that it is difficult for them to tolerate and women are relatively passive that they should avoid such situations.

It emphasizes that men's sexual desires can be triggered in any time, and they can not control them. If we keep give wrong ideas to teenagers, they will eventually have a wrong perceptions about sex, and view men as potential perpetrators. Like no woman should be a potential victim, no man should be a potential perpetrator. Rather, we have to make teenagers to think that perpetrators are not a man, but a criminal. 

Lead them to recognize the reality and make right choices

It is urgent to acknowledge that these days, sexual experiences are happening in younger ages. Due to the closed sex culture of Korea, many people go to metel and gets wrong perception of sex from porn. In the long term, it's much better to admit sex as an area that needs to be discussed publicly. Adults are not willing to accept, but teenagers now are already living under a open culture, and so are the twenties. Even tough cohabitation is a very natural thing to do, parents considers it as a taboo. If you tell your parents that you are living together with your boy/girl friend, 99% of Korean parents will be very angry.

If we admit that sexual experience is now done in a younger age, there are so many other sex educations that we can do. We could teach them how to express their loves without having thoughtless sex, at how they should be more careful about having sex. We should also teach that what exactly is to have a sex and the consequence, and what possible responsibility that they could have if they are not careful. After that, we could introduce various contraceptive methods and teach them how to take care of each other.