“Do you want to stop by my place for a bowl of ramen?” “My iPhone is dead; can I recharge it at your place for a while?” These kinds of lines are popular on SNS these days. These are pick-up lines, except that they’re taking it to a higher level. Basically, what they mean is “I want to be in bed with you,” but they are expressing it in an idiomatic way. These kinds of lines have spread widely among young people, and are considered witty. These humorous sex-related quotes are called “Sek-drib,” and they are trendy in our current society. As you may well know, our current society is pretty open to sex. It wasn’t so open to sex in the olden times, though. Mostly because of the strong influence of Confucianism, people thought that it was obligatory to maintain chastity, and they considered talking about sex vulgar. This continued until the time of modernization, and then we South Koreans finally began to speak out. This change happened very fast, and the generation that was the fastest in the transition stage was the younger generation, mostly those in their university years. 

 

There is an example that shows the change in sexual attitudes among university students through the years. In the survey conducted two times among 1,000 university students in 1992 and 1999, the percentage of students who said that virginity must be preserved until marriage fell to 9%. ST conducted a similar survey early this year (2013), among university students [Diagram 1]. 

 

In the said survey, more than 70% of the students said that people don’t have to keep their virginity as long as they love their partner dearly. In another survey, where we asked about touching each other’s body [Diagram 2], around 30% of the students said that they can even ask their lover to engage in sexual intercourse with them. 

 

As can be seen above, most of the students nowadays are casual about sex and engage in free sex. Even though it can be considered only a social trend, we should stop and look back at the current status once in a while because this phenomenon has its good side and questionable side. ST is going to cover the different aspects of the sex life of university students: the increasing sex problems in the society, the gap between sexual awareness and sexual knowledge, and where the sex life of university students is headed.