Pornography, Prostitution, and Education

Written by In Kyung (Kay) Nam and Ukyung (Heidi) Nam

Half of South Korean men buy sex. The age at which men begin buying sex is as early as thirteen, with the average age of buying sex being 24. Take into consideration the underreporting, and two-third of South Korean men buy sex at least once in their lives. Reasons for buying sex differs by individuals, but curiosity about sex tops all else. Though South Korea instituted special law to prosecute the purchase of sex in 2004, due to poor executions given the normalized buying-sex culture amongst men, sex crimes only continue to exacerbate. 

Whether prostitution should be legalized is a debate that belongs to a separate realm of feminism. But we must look past such debate and focus on the story behind these data on sex purchase, to look straight at the reality of sexism in South Korea. With beyond the majority of South Korean women reporting experiences of dating violence and domestic violence, it is no secret that the majority of South Korean men are profoundly conflating sex with violence. The constituting forces behind such dangerous confusions are many, but the most unexpected yet serious force is the overall education system in South Korea and how it treats sex, intimacy and human relationships.

South Korean students spend 80% of their days in school and in private tutoring academies. With the education cost per one student until they enter college being at least 4 hundred million South Korean Won, most students’ lives revolve around school and tutoring, with an intense focus on getting into top universities. Though such an adolescent life sounds productive on principle, the realities produced by such a philosophy work directly against the nation’s interest in nurturing the next generation of women and men committed to humanity, therefore significantly reducing the chances of them being dedicated to achieving gender equality.

South Korean education system, entirely built for intelligent students to get into universities chiefly based on scores and results, treats adolescents’ curiosity around sex and intimacy as a serious distraction from their studies and from their ultimate goal of getting into a good college. Sex education in school is naturally optional, with its content as unrealistic as “your sexual desires and curiosities shall be released by more exercise.” To prevent sexual assault, kids are encouraged “not to take a trip together with a person of the opposite sex.” Sex education is chiefly concerned with prevention of sexual assault, rather than with teaching about sex, sexual pleasure, and sexuality. By the time the students are finished with sex education, they have no clue about sexual pleasure outside penetration and have no idea about the gradients of sexuality. Rather, they walk away with an idea that heterosexual sex is all there is to sex and that engaging in it is a bad idea. 

The gradient of human needs and physical intimacy, romantic and sexual partnerships, and the variety of contraceptives and their usages are too much a stretch for sex education in South Korea. The sex education, when done in South Korea, is entirely focused on abstinence, with obvious hints of victim-blaming: “Rape happens because of women’s idleness”, with no space allowed for the students to seriously examine and question their needs and desires for intimacy.

That students turn to pornography in this culture is not at all a surprise. Under this unsatisfying and restrictive sex education system, most students set out to find out more about sex and human intimacy themselves–with pornography. According to the recent study, 94.05% of boys in the age of 13 to 19 consume pornography. From watching pornography for educational purposes, flawed social beliefs formed, held, and perpetuated to be true by their peers who are also forming their belief about sex on consumption of pornography. Boys tout in interviews, when asked about sex: ‘the size of your penis is your self-worth’ and ‘cool men should have great sex techniques’. And to learn and practice such techniques, they turn to prostitution. In addition, as they have learned all other academic subjects in private tutoring academy, they turn to private tutoring academies run by pick-up artists, as they enter college and become allowed to date. These academies earn roughly eighteen million South Korean Won per student a year.

Boys are not the only ones affected by such no-talk-of-sex education. As girls also rely on pornography, they soon learn that sex is only penetrative; something women endure and men enjoy; and something that to be enjoyable for men must be painful for women. No data is present about how many girls know where their clitoris is located by the time they enter college and start dating. Growing up in this education system, girls are less likely to know when they are being abused in bed and raped in intimate relationships. If sex is coercive and violent as learned from pornography, how would she know that the absence of her pleasure and lack of her enthusiasm in sex are serious signs of abuse and rape? In my experience of talking with girls curious about whether she’s being abused in an intimate relationship, the first thing they ask me is whether sex is really made for all humans and not only for men. 

More seriously, in this culture, boys will be boys. Several male celebrities have publicly admitted to assaulting, stalking, or committing some kind of violence against women in their early years. “It was just good old days” habit. I was curious about women’s bodies so I went into a room full of women sleeping and just started touching them.” A member of a popular K-Pop group said with laughter on a live radio broadcast. There was no visible consequence for this obvious assault–not even a public apology.

Human curiosity around sex and sexuality is natural, normal and healthy, and an opportunity for us to help the next generation insist on equal sex, respectful even in the most casual circumstances. And yet, South Korea only tells the story of shame around sex and sexuality, putting cultural taboos on even being curious about the subject altogether when young. So the sex that happens behind closed doors, in shame, and in the dark is bound to be fraught and unequal, performed with violence against women learned through pornography. In this culture, can all genders be truly equal?

Gender equality everywhere except for the bedroom is no equality at all. All parties involved in sex must have equal stake and say in the interaction, and a sure way to ensure the next generation of respectful people who don’t equate sex with violence done onto any party in sex is a comprehensive sex education that first validates their needs and human desires for intimacy and that helps them navigate realize their needs in a truly equal setting.

Published on the Honest April website on Nov 19th, 2019.

https://honest.hkspublications.org/71-2/