Cruise-themed party at a club in Gangnam
Image source: Club Octagon

Thought there’d be no slut culture in Korea because of the Neo-Confucianism and the Protestants? Think again! See the clubs at Itaewon, Hongdae and Gangnam lined up with girls wearing dresses barely covering their crotch area! See the couples make out in dark alleys shamelessly! See my neighbour dry-hump by the security gate on the first floor! (No, actually, don’t, it’s painful enough for the other residents as is)

I live in a university area. Most students live in “one-rooms”, studios as they are called here. Since the students who live alone mostly do so because their home is far away, it means that for the first time in their lives, they are free to run their lives as they see fit. And this is when people sometimes go crazy, especially women who are sexually suppressed and taught to “be discreet” for the first 19 years of their lives.

Story 1: A girl in my building (we took some courses together at university) lives with her boyfriend in her spacious flat. But her boyfriend keeps his other flat in the area so if either of their parents say they’re coming in for a visit, they can quickly move all his stuff back. They’re a responsible couple, they split the bills, he sometimes kicks in some more groceries, she sometimes makes dinner, and since they’re both into kickboxing they spend a lot of time doing fun things together and sharing the costs.

Story 2: My friend from high school who is from a hyper-conservative family in the South. As soon as she came to Seoul, she kicked off her nunnery manners and replaced them with a full-on rampage. She started dating (when I say ‘dating’…) just any guy who would like her, but constantly keep a horde of guys “on the watch” just in case she ran out of money, or needed help for fixing things around her house, or whatever. I once introduced her to one of my guy friends when I didn’t yet know about her sexuality being in overdrive. He came home one day to her flat and found some other guy sleeping on the floor of her tiny flat. It’s probably a good time to mention I’m not friends with her anymore.

Story 3: My neighbour. Mom lives with two daughters, about my age. One of the girls, let’s call her Girl A, is a massive slut and she is not ashamed of it. Do you know why I know she’s back in town? Because there was a Lexus parked outside my building as I was walking up to my flat today (Nobody in my building owns a car besides the landlady’s family, and they have a Kia). Last time it was a BMW, so she probably switched guys, or the guy switched cars. I, and several other residents have had to complain to the landlady – “We’re really sorry…but…the girl in 201, she’s dry-humping in front of the building”. Of course we didn’t say ‘dry-humping’, I said “She had her boyfriend’s shirt off and they were making out profusely and not blocking the door so I could not get into the house for 5 minutes until they finally stopped and moved their asses two steps away”. I said that, really, because it was the third time it had happened. The other times she was talking with her phone so loudly everybody in the building could here, she was smoking in the hallway, she was singing (or at least trying) at 1AM, her dog was barking at 3AM. The Complete Shitty Neighbour Package, Deluxe Edition. Come And Get It While It’s Hot.

Anyway, how do these women turn into liberated sluts overnight? To understand this, we need a brief look at Joseon Dynasty, which ended in 1910 (or in 1907, depending on analyses).

Joseon society took a sharp turn from the more liberal Goryeo era. When Lee Song-kye became Taejo and founded Joseon, he condemned most Goryeo traditions, calling them ‘barbaric’. It’s good to know that such dichotomies were pervasive throughout the dynasty – for instance the worshipping of the Ming Dynasty versus antagonism for the new Qing Dynasty; the former was seen as the righteous holder to the throne and the latter as a ‘barbaric’ tribe whose culture and politics were seen as inferior (This resulted in several political feuds in mid to late Joseon).

Anyway, to get back on track, Goryeo women had a more or less equal status to men; married couples went to live with the woman’s family first before moving out, women could become household heads, women could remarry and family inheritance was divided equally among all siblings.

In Joseon, women were virtually denied any social status. Women were married according to their father’s will (or of her eldest brother if the father died), they had to show as little skin as possible, they could not become household heads, they could not inherit family money, they were not registered as citizens in family lineage records (jokbo). Sexual desires of women were ignored and suppressed, while men were free to bring home concubines, pay prostitutes, and de facto divorce their wives unilaterally. This social atmosphere was not limited to the peasants. Most kings had one queen consort, and a string of concubines as well as extramarital affairs with court workers which sometimes resulted in children, thereby resulting in social status upgrades.

Female student on the way to Ewha Hakdang in the 1900s
(Does this look like a burqa to you too?)

Such long traditions of sexual repression continues even into today. In a college survey at Korea University, it was observed that on a sample of a 1000 students, a fourth of them have had sex after starting university. The numbers are probably higher than that in reality though, since many women are encouraged to lie bout their sexuality.

I twice had friends (one who was a year younger than me, and another the same age) come to me and cry to me about sex-related troubles. One girl had a pregnancy scare because she and her boyfriend at the time ‘were too afraid to go buy condoms and so when she didn’t get her period he was looking for ways to buy a pregnancy kit online’ (which is illegal because in Korea – they could only be sold in pharmacies until this year, from whence they will be sold at convenience stores as well). I scolded her profusely and said something along the lines of ‘and going to the ob-gyn for an abortion doesn’t scare you?’. She said she and her boyfriend would take turns buying condoms from the vending machine from the subway because they didn’t want to face the shame of clerks glaring at the mall (which is a really stupid idea because, come on, subway vending machines?!).