By Andy Crown
(EDITORS NOTE!!! IT’S ONE OF THEM!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, AND DON’T BLAME ME FOR THE RESULTS!!!)
Springtime is here. Lucky lovers laugh their way into the evening, holding hands against the backdrop of the setting sun, proclaiming to one another the words of the Korean poet, Kim So-wol...
The sunset glowing over the peaks must be your glory. The sunrise crimsoning over the peaks must be your morning grandeur. Should the world come to an end you are the only excuse for my being. Drawn ever to your lovely thoughts, I shall soon be with you like your shadow.
Meanwhile, I prepare to toss and turn away another night of solitude in my moonlit lonely room, where I will dream of my countless mistakes and errors in love, and come face to face once again with the cruel realization of my ineptitude with women, particularly Korean women. This spring finds me in a different state from the last, for, to quote Kim again, last spring when I was in love...
I did not know that the moon rises nightly I did not know before that I would miss like mad I did not know before how to watch the brightest moon I did not know before that the moon would be my sorrow.
The trials and tribulations of love are intriguing. In order to find true love, many of us will spend countless hours standing impatiently in line, waiting for our chance to take the most exciting of all rides over the moon to the brink of lunacy itself, purchasing our tickets with bruised egos and broken hearts, and exiting our private carriages complaining of unmet expectations. Still, we get right back in line for another trip to pain.
Even the hesitant, the weary, the bitter, the committed non-believers, fast on their way to safer entertainment, stop dead in their lonely tracks on this solid earth unable to pass us by without looking back over their shoulders (if only sometimes to jeer and curse). They stare as we ride the love-coaster dangerously upside-down, above, and around them, for indeed, in love the path we follow resembles the circles and loops of so many insane, intoxicated birds. Somehow the doubters are enticed by the sounds of our exhilarated screams, however short lived, which must unleash some hidden but nonetheless irrepressible, desire for voyeuristic stimulation buried deep beneath the folds and crevices of their dried-up, shriveled, prune-shaped hearts.
This is what I, a cynical optimist overcome at times by periods of happy pessimism, think about love. Perhaps a few of you other western teachers in Korea agree with me. But what do our Korean students think about love? Several students at ELS Pusan Choryang-dong and myself conducted a survey to investigate this question and other similar questions about love, sex, and romance. A survey, you ask? Yes. From here on, I'll try to be a bit more scientific in order to demonstrate just how different, and similar, Koreans are to Westerners when it comes to love.
Utilizing a basic knowledge of survey methodology and design acquired in university, I supervised and gave my assistance to Chang Kyung Sim, a student of ELS Pusan. She drafted and translated into English twenty questions of her own choosing about the loves, relationships and dating behavior of her fellow students. The final draft of the questions was given with verbal instructions to native English speaking ELS teachers who agreed to administer the surveys during their English conversation classes to 114 Korean students at ELS Pusan on February 20 and 21, 1997. In order to minimize error and maximize the reliability of the survey, the participating teachers were instructed to clearly explain each question to their students, and to ensure the confidentiality of student responses by taking such measures as spacing the students apart from each other in the classroom.
We administered the same survey to English native speaking teachers at ELS Pusan Choryang and ELS Pusan So-myon, expecting to find some interesting differences between the responses of ELS students and teachers. Fourteen male teachers and nine female teachers answered the survey.
The median age of the native English-speaking teachers was 29 years and the mean age was 30.7. Of the 112 students who answered our gender identification question, 53 or 47.3 percent were men and 59 or 52.7 percent were women. The median and mean ages of the female students were 24 and 24.7 years respectively, and the median and mean ages of the male students were 26.5 and 27.6 years.
We did in fact find more differences between men and women and between Korean ELS students and their teachers, than space allows me to comment on here. For example, 100 percent of the 8 female teachers would date someone younger than them, but only 57.6 percent of the 59 female students would do the same. About 76 percent of teachers have kissed their lovers before the end of the first week of their relationships. In stark contrast, almost 40 percent of the students have never kissed any "lover," ever. Nearly 78 percent of male students could have sex with someone they loved before marriage, but only 38 of female students could do the same, while a whopping 96 percent of teachers could have sex with a lover before marriage.
Please interpret these statistics and our results summarized below with caution. Due to our unscientific selection procedures and the small size of our sample, the opinions and behavior of ELS students can not necessarily be said to represent the opinions and behavior of any wider segment of the general population in Pusan or Korea. Even though we took measures to standardize the survey, it is probable that the survey is peppered with errors. Some errors are due to the students' mistakes in formulating the surveys, as well as the students' miscomprehension of the survey questions as they answered them. Lastly, we must consider the insurmountable obstacle of many Koreans' inability to deal frankly and honestly with matters relating to love and sex, particularly when seated together in a classroom full of other Koreans, both males and females. Furthermore, it must be noted that quite a few of the teacher surveys were completed in a spirit of jest. Reservations aside, I hope you will enjoy reading the following selections of some of our most interesting data derived from a fairly large group of people whom many of us find ourselves dealing with daily as teachers colleagues.
I only hope you do not find yourself reading this article just as I wrote it - alone on a Saturday night, gazing outside your dusty window for some sign from the silent dim moon of your lost love, but seeing only noisy, gray Pusan.
NOTE: - * The number of people who responded to this particular question.
1) Do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend (we mean a lover)?
| Men Students | Women Students | All Students | ELS Teachers | |
| Yes | 34.0% | 32.2% | 33.0% | 60.9% |
| No | 66.0% | 67.8% | 67.0% | 39.1% |
| Number* | 53.0 | 59.0 | 112.0 | 23.0 |
| **************************** | ************************** | *************************** | **************************** | ********************** |
2) Do you think it is O.K. to date two people at the same time (have two lovers at the same time)?
| Men Students | Women Students | All Students | ELS Teachers | |
| Yes | 14.5% | 8.3% | 11.3% | 38.0% |
| No | 63.6% | 65.0% | 64.3% | 43.0% |
| Maybe | 21.8% | 26.7% | 24.3% | 19.0% |
| Number* | 54.0 | 60.0 | 114.0 | 21.0 |
| ************************** | ************************** | ************************** | ************************** | ************************ |
3) Could you have sex without love?
| Men Students | Women Students | All Students | ELS Teachers | |
| Yes | 56.4% | 13.6% | 34.2% | 78.3% |
| No | 43.6% | 86.4% | 65.8% | 21.7% |
| Number* | 55.0 | 59.0 | 114.0 | 23.0 |
| *************************** | *************************** | ************************** | *************************** | *********************** |
4) If you weren't married, but you loved someone, could you have sex with that person before marriage?
| Men Students | Women Students | All Students | ELS Teachers | |
| Yes | 77.8% | 38.3% | 57.0 | 96.0% |
| No | 22.2% | 61.7% | 43.0 | 4.0% |
| Number* | 54.0 | 60.0 | 114.0 | 23.0 |
| ****************************** | *************************** | ************************** | ************************** | *********************** |