Sex, Pries, and Videotape

So Pete the sewer tour , married to Korean , lived in Korea years ago , lives back in the states Now came to Korea last now by the time this is out last month And and so we . He came on my tour , contact me , he and he and I were communicating a little bit because he's a he's a metalhead as well .

So we were talking a lot about heavy metal and , disconnected , became friendly through the socials , social medias , and came on my dark side tour And had a good time . And when he came on the tour he brought me a gift And Pete the sewer tour brought me goose island beer . Bourbon County brand stout .

So he came on the tour And then we made a plan to meet up , because I came with this , his family , his wife and his daughter daughters a year or two younger than my daughter , i think a year younger And we went . We hung out at the Dyson Comics Cafe for a whole day . We were there for like eight to ten hours or something like that .

It's like after the tour we're right in the subway together , there's one , one person left and we end up on the same subway train together going back and we got to this deep conversation about the game The Sims . We're both really big into it And I'm like let's meet up on Friday to just talk about The Sims .

And then Pete messaged me a few days later asking how , how difficult or steep Inwangsan is as a hike , because he and his wife wanted to go up But she recently had a injury in her leg injury So she had to be careful . I said I said I'll go with them , so just just hang out and I can show you around there a little bit .

And so , but ended up , unfortunately , that Pete's wife couldn't join us . So Pete and I just had a great day . It was , it was raining , walking through this , you know the sacred , shamanic sites of of Inwangsan , spent about two hours up there , i guess it was .

Then it came down and had some , had some some good food , a few beers , and yeah , two great days hanging out with Pete . And yeah , i told Pete I was going to open the bottle on the next episode that we record at night And here we are . So very good , pete .

I now see , now you've you've broken the seal , Pete , and now you have to bring me another bottle next .

And so , even though we had sex ed in in school , suju Hanson was kind of like the beloved sex teacher of Canada , sex educator , the Canadian Dr Ruth Yeah , that's what people often called her Yeah , so , yeah . So she passed away . And I thought about that because sex ed in Korea has been an issue for a really long time , it's .

It pops up the news at least once , at least once a year . And so I thought , yeah , so do an episode . And you know how I found out that Su , suju Hanson died , how The comedian , margaret Cho , margaret Cho , the Korean , korean American , she posted about it .

Oh , then I sent her a message and I was like , oh , she , you know , su was , was like a superhero to Canadians , my generation . And then Margaret , margaret , joe and I just chatted back and forth just briefly . She was saying how she was so amazing . So , yeah , so , yeah . So this , this episode , is dedicated to Suju Hanson .

That's that . That's something . I think that's . That's a bit of an unfortunate , that's quite unfortunate . So but a bit of background . First , on sex ed . And it was just go back to the 80s . I'm going to go to , you know , say , for 35 , 30 , 40 years ago . So there was sex ed in middle and high school .

It was quite limited because , well , teachers didn't really have the proper training . So the it advanced very slowly , delivery was very poor , just teachers weren't , were , weren't prepared for it , they were not experts in that particular subject . So then the Ministry of Education began more teacher training programs in the 80s .

But also at the time there were a lot of organizations that offered lectures , sex , sex education lectures , like the YWCA , and another one was the Soul Youth Guidance Society . So there were groups that that didn't shy away from it because sex was taboo .

It's comparatively , koreans are comparatively , really undereducated about sex and safe sex , sex health and stuff like that , and it's still kind of a general consensus that there's no need to teach it in school because people will learn it when they become adults . So but that's one of the problems with it , with the system , because that's that's not the case .

You know , that's like saying people you don't have to teach math because people learn about math when they grow up . It's like , yeah , when you , when you get a bank account , yeah , Yeah , yeah , so , yeah , so yeah I think that's a good point . Yeah , so when you start inserting stuff in your bank account you'll learn about it ?

No , it doesn't work that way , so so But anyway , at the time of the 80s they were growing calls for for better sex education As , like awareness of issues started to grow . Rate cases really started to skyrocket from 1974 to 1984 . And these are being attributed to just poor understanding of sex and in no clear method of education for people , especially men .

So also at the time , sexual activity started to increase . Between 1971 and 1981 . Sexual activity for males rose from 18 , 19 percent to almost 28 percent And for females , within that same time period , but actually a little bit longer 68 , 1965 to 81 , it rose from about 4 percent to 14 , 15 percent .

Now , of course , those numbers are probably lower than what they actually were because people still even if it's an anonymous survey , they often shy about giving such information . So that's kind of a backer . Just the 80s , moving into the into the 90s , Sex ed videos came into schools And unfortunately the videos were complete Shite , which is absolute trash .

They and they weren't good for both men and women . So for example , for women , these videos said that the responsibility for sexual assault on women was by women . So the responsibility for the result was on the women , on the victims themselves , yeah , yeah , or even the potential victims Shouldn't have been wearing that .

Yeah , exactly , and these were videos coming out in the sex education program . So they say stuff like women have to dress appropriately , like no , no , low cut shorts , mini skirts and stuff like that .

This is terrible , and these kinds of things just existed for a long time . Now this video and videos like this We're being shown through the 90s and we're still shown in Korea as recently as 2020 . So Wow , it has decades old videos with with outdated , archaic information about women and men .

So Also at the time of the 90s , rape became the third most common crime committed by youths And so , again , wider calls for a better sex education and counseling to focus on STDs , pregnancy , contraception and whatnot , all started to grow again at that time . But also there was a call for services to help parents as well , which I think is great .

This is a great idea , and they call this family life education , to help educate parents on how to talk to their kids about sex . So something linked to that . There was a Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea that offered telephone counseling to kids in the 90s . And then we go ahead to the 2000s . There was a lot of structural changes .

A lot of this is pretty deep . It's a lot of its numbers and stats . Trying to go through them as quickly as possible .

But the 2000s saw a massive structural change In Korea and including more single parent households , and so , in 2007 , the Single Parent Family Support Act was signed into law , and the purpose of this , as stated in the act itself , was to contribute to the stabilization of living and to the promotion of welfare of single parent families by supporting them to lead a

healthy and civilized life . That was an article one . It's the very beginning of the act . Article 13 was a breakdown of welfare support , so money , finance , financial support for single parent households . So this was growing . But linked to all this was the continual stigmatization of unwed mothers . This was a massive still . It still is .

Still is Still is massive , yeah .

So abortion is not legal , but it's decriminalized now in Korea . In 2010 , there was a study by Seoul National University and with a partner organization about teen mothers being ignored and not given proper pre and postnatal care . The stigmatization was so bad that it didn't really matter .

14% had no checkups at all during the entire pregnancy . 3.7% of them resulted in these , these premature births . And that particular percentage is compared against older mothers , like adults in , say , the 20s upward , that only have 1.3% of premature , of premature births . So it's way more than double for teenage mothers to have to give premature births .

So this is likely due to having fewer checkups , because fewer checkups increases the likelihood of premature births . So 50% of of premature babies or premature births are preventable with checkups 50% .

And all of this has denied them , these young unwed mothers , mostly teenagers , because they are stigmatized and they're ashamed and not given proper they're , they're afraid to get go get care and they're not given proper care . But checkups are so important because , you know , there's a lot of early diagnosis of complications for a mother and baby .

So most of these unchecked . Another another key thing most of these unchecked teen mothers , the ones that don't have any checkups . 86% of them run away from home in Korea And a lot of them are kind of forced to keep their pregnancies a secret and the majority of them give up their children . So could all of this be prevented with proper sex education ?

Very likely , yes , it will get a little bit into more into that going forward .

So so , as the UN points out , children who who do learn about sex through a positive and inclusive program or guidelines , and who have parents who are present parents , their own parents who are there for them , are more likely to have their first sexual experience later in life , and that's when they're more mature , cautious and emotionally physically prepared for it .

Right , and that's statistically shown through the UN , from the UN . And so all this needs to be done . All of it starts with proper sex education And unfortunately , in Korea , age and this , you know , this started in the 2000s , the age of first sexual experiences are happening earlier , as young as 13 years old .

The core of education , sex ed in Korea , happens in high school , But the major but sexual experiences are happening earlier . So there's this . This is complete misbalance . This , the deeper , better education has to start in elementary school .

So , and some high school , some high schools themselves have prohibited surveys checking student knowledge of contraception And the results are . The reason , i should say , is a lot of these schools , their very conservative view is learning about contraception encourages using contraception Oh , that was .

The babies were never registered with the government . The parents never registered their babies . There's currently a massive investigation led by the board of audit and inspection to find out where these 2000 kids are . Already , in less than a month , they have found several of them dead .

So these are these are just some of the cases that are currently in the news through this investigation . Where are these 2000 babies ? So a couple of them ? A mother killed her two newborns and stored their bodies in a freezer . Mother gave mother gave her baby to a stranger she met on the internet . A baby just found dead in a trash can .

An infant died of malnutrition and neglect . Parents acute parents who are currently accused of killing and burying their infant . Mother is accused of abusing , killing her killing , abusing and killing her infant and abandoning the body . And the majority of these parents are young . So where's the sexual sex education ?

The arguments can be made that with proper education , these births wouldn't have happened , and then the babies wouldn't have been born , which would have would have you know just the irony of it would have saved their lives . So so our unwanted babies due to , at least in part , to poor sex sex ed . I say yes , i think it's very likely , very likely so .

So currently , in response to all this , the new birth notification system is in review and the government is being encouraged to get it underway as quickly as possible to prevent more unregistered babies . As we push again now , say , go to 2015 , where we talk about the education , the curricula starts to , starts to become a little bit interesting .

So in previous decades there was this push to have these better sex ed curricula all across the country . So in 2015 , the national level of school sexual education standards was introduced and it was compulsory . It had to be done , so teachers had to teach it . But now remember this was compulsory from the program .

These are some of the things that the program stated . One reason for sexual violence is that women do not pay for dates and men want and demand something in return . That was in the sex ed program in the pulso area . Men are impulsively sexual . Again , this is like it said previously , and women should cope with this .

So this is the same that was that the video was saying decades ago . So men are impulsively sexual and women should have to cope with this . So not only is this again make you know , give responsibility to potential victims , it belittles men And it puts , it , belittles them , makes them , it makes all the reader like , oh , okay , am I , am I like that ?

Like okay , okay , maybe I am like that , and then maybe they'll actually didn't act on it and not actually be like that at all . It's a serious belittling . It's a horrible education thing . Education , it's not education at all . You're not educating anyone , you're just creating this , these ridiculous stereotypes .

So so , yeah , i think it gives boys and young men the wrong impressions of themselves And then give society wrong impressions of them as well , and it provides an excuse for both of them when , when , when some , when some men do commit crimes , they're the creates this ridiculous excuse .

Another thing that said is this program said women have to focus on their appearance And men have to focus on making money . Mm , hmm , awful . So another thing is that it encouraged sexual assault victims to control their negativity and to think positively . Imagine telling that to a victim . A horrible thing to say . And this was in the education system .

So so this program ran for a whole year before it , you know , through heavy criticism it , it was edited , but where did kids turn ?

And so teens have started to become more more frequently , have started to go online for advice , information , and most of this comes from non professionals . So it wasn't like when we I was growing up listening to Sex with Sue on Sunday nights on the radio , because she was a nurse and a professional sex educator and deeply respected in the in in her field .

These are just YouTubers , influencers , who are giving sex advice . You should never give any type of sexual advice at all If you are not professional . Even if someone asks you , your answer is seek a professional . That's my advice .

Go speak to a professional , and I deplore influencers who do this , who take a position of knowledge and then they will try to give advice on sex dating , anything , anything really that they're not , they have no expertise in . They just have their own personal anecdotes and they think that they have .

They have a bunch of followers or they have their ego get stroked because they're being asked these questions . Then they give advice . Don't fucking do that . Give advice as you tell these people to seek professional consultation . Oh , it drives me nuts . These kids are being driven to YouTube and influencers and all this , all that other horseshit .

So a couple of examples of kids not knowing what to do and doing stuff wrong . In 2018 , there was a teen couple had consensual sex . They both wanted it . They did it . They used , instead of a condom , a shopping bag And at the end , they found that there was a hole at the tip Of course , oh darn Yeah , oh man , they got a really cheap shopping bag .

And it's as far as I could tell , they ended up getting pregnant . So they go online for advice And they ask the poor kid is like .

they thought a shopping bag would do the trick . So so the more and more these kids are going online , they're asking advice about contraception . You know , they're asking what , what it is , and and so yeah , and then in another chat room I discovered that one we don't know who it was , of course it was , it was all private .

They asked if a food wrap , like plastic , like saran wrap , would do the trick . Nope , most certainly will not .

I don't understand . It's so bizarre .

You can spend 15 hours just talking about you know condoms , you let alone sexual health , yeah , and consent , and even you know people's sexual preferences , safety , how to do things properly . 15 hours , well , they were just teaching them how . You know women had a dress and young women had a dress and young men had to make money , i suppose , because it's all .

Either one of them are good for good , for That's what the system is telling them yeah , so one's a toy for the other and the other one's a robot for society . That's what they're being , that's what they're being taught . So , yeah , it's frustrating .

But another like yeah , another key thing about the curriculum is that it talked about sexual desires and having it . Having them , should they having sexual desires ? But the curriculum mostly focused on teaching these kids how to suppress their sexual desires . It's like a fucking church .

It just focuses on dealing with one part of it anyway , focuses on dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault , not the prevention of one .

I was going to talk about , like when , first of my experience something impurity , but I think I think I'll just leave that for now . I'm not going to mention it , but I freaked out first time .

Yeah , so hygiene , especially Hygiene , so , anyway , so , yeah , so concerned by 2018 , the were growing concerns that kids were learning mostly from non professionals on the internet and their peers and stuff like even from porn , which is I'm not against the sex industry , i'm not against porn , i'm against learning about sex from porn .

Right , that has to be right , curbed very seriously . So it's just so . The big irony as well is that how we talk about sexual health , similar to what we just talked about education , where traditional medicine in Korea and largely in Asia is , is preventative , the sex ed does not have preventive education about sexual health . It's just such a weird irony .

like I was saying , it generally says that women should expect sexual violence or not expected .

But education could would have curbed it to a huge extent .

It could have prevented a whole bunch of things like the stabbing in in in Gangnam , the bathroom stabbing Yeah , recent one or last year Yeah , so many things could have , could have been prevented , i think , with proper education And then by 2020 , a lot of people were suggesting that the in through and through this the sex room .

He had no idea . He's like I don't , i don't get it . He was , he wasn't taught , he wasn't given , he didn't have parents who were there for him , who felt comfortable teaching it . He didn't have a school system , didn't have an education system that was there for him . And then so there are all these victims because of that . So now , terrible .

That's part of the problem sometimes , and this is obviously an example of it . So , and then just this year it's already just 2023 , something came out that was called the preliminary ordinance on sex education .

So obviously this is outdated And this is against the UN standards , which is called the Comprehensive Sexuality Education or the , or the CSE , and a key point of the CSE is understanding sexual behavior , and without an education system that teaches you sexual behavior , you're not going to understand it .

You're going to have a distorted view of it or no , no , no view of it at all , which is sometimes maybe even worse . So the preliminary ordinance in sex education 20 this year teaches abstinence , abstinence only , education , not abstinence and safe sex , abstinence only .

And it does not teach anything about sexual behavior , which is a problem Because , of course , when you teach abstinence only education , teens are still going to have sex , just that now , they're not going to know anything about it And it's going to be unsafe , dangerous , risky , inappropriate , assault , it's going to increase . So it's just like .

It's just like abortion , Like making abortion illegal is not going to stop people from doing it , it's going to stop them from having access to safe abortions , right ? So this is also why I think we should have safe injection sites for people who shoot up drugs .

Give them a safe place to do it , decriminalize it , even legalize it , i think , but have laws surrounding it , like you can't shoot up and drive or whatever , have guardrails , yeah , and you have your safety belts And where no one else can get hurt People who are not interested in that behavior you can do it , but you have safety nets in place for the user

and people around them . So , yeah , so this is what's happening with this ordinance , what was proposed by the ordinance , and it's just making kids even more so less equipped to have safe sex . Another key problem is that it ignores sexuality and gender . So it says marriage and sex , and marriage and sex are only between heterosexual men and women .

That was in the ordinance , and how archaic is that .

They had something for kids , right , some kids festival or something , and I'm sure the kids had a great time when they went there And they had no idea what the whole . Have you seen pictures ?

Now they're being boarded by police buses on the edge of the road , but it's this big crowd making this beeline around City Hall Plaza And the plaza is basically empty , except for a stage and what looks like an inflatable chick with a crown of thorns .

So in the end , fortunately , the ordinance was rejected . It did not go into place , but there are current fears that something similar is going to pop up and it will be implemented . So now just a final thing Public response . What is the public response to this piss ? poor sex ed in Korea .

For one hour it's $25,000 . So that's pretty pricey if you want to have a very good session for your kids to learn about proper sex ed .

So it highlights even other issues in Korea where it highlights why sex ed really A proper sex ed really needs to be in the public school system , because if it's just gonna start being taught through private education , it's not going to expand to most people , because education , especially private education and especially in Korea , is for the rich .

So low income people who unfortunately are more statistically prone to have early births , teenage births , unsafe sex , will be the ones who will not have access to this education if it grows in the private sector and not in the public sector .

But now , currently , right now , the government is kind of shaping the private to the haguan system , but of course they're not going to do anything with these sex ed haguans , because if they're not doing anything with their own public system , they're not gonna do it . They're not gonna support the private system for sex ed .

So I don't know , someone , someone else needs to come along . Some professional needs to come along , like Suja Hansen did , like who is the Dr Ruth ? Dr Ruth and people like that , some I think that that will be here . We say , because there's the Internet , now kids can watch this stuff on on , you know , youtube privately .

There's more access , there's more accessibility to education . There's just , the system is just swamped with garbage And kids are not interested in that . They , they guess they mostly want to play their video games and shit , roblox , whatever the fuck , and yeah , but someone does need to come along , i think .

I think that's that's going to be Korea's savior , someone who's a nurse , who's an expert in sex ed , and they'll , they'll , they'll just do a show , and yeah , and just a ongoing .

We had a cake and everything .

But the quote was something Make sure you tell your daughter you love her , and frequently , because if you don't , someone else will and that person Won't meet it .

It's kind of like the AV Session of there's some was one really good show that just finished called never have I ever on Netflix And it's it's a very practical Coming of age series for it , four seasons and it's about , you know , very modern in ways , practical ways of dealing with sexual topics and love , topics of love and and Adolescence .

I mean I like , i like , i like , i like a lot of modern stuff that's coming out deals with adolescence a lot more candidly , less like porkies , even less like breakfast club . It's a lot more , lot better . I mean we just recently watched Mean Girls And I've never seen I've . I know , oh , tina Fey , man , tina Fey wrote it And I just found out that that's .

Some universities actually reference it or teach it and these they use the movie in psychology classes dealing with group dynamics and things like that .

So , but Yeah , the Degrassi started with the kids of Degrassi Street , degrassi junior high , then Degrassi high and , yeah , and a lot of those actors were the same going through the whole series .

Oh , i didn't know that part That's yeah , yeah , and then They all played the actual ages They were and There wasn't 20 year olds , you know , playing 15 year olds or whatever . Or you know , like 35 year olds playing university students or whatever .

But That that whole series , from kids of the kids of Degrassi Street through to Degrassi high , dealt with Sex , pregnancy , drugs , violence , bullying , yeah , racism , everything that kids really need to to know about , and it dealt with it in a in a child's A dramatic show .

That was also extremely entertaining because you could , there were , there was a kid , that was everyone . Yeah , there was a kid , there was a character , that was everyone , there were all . There's so many different ethnicities and dealt with dealt with homosexuality as well .

So there was a kid , kids who liked comics , there were kids who played music , there were jocks , they were nerds like the geeky smart kids and they were . They were referred to as all that , yeah , but But it was like watching a day in school .

Nothing was , nothing , was Was sugar coated in that series and that's one of the reasons why it lasted for What , like 15 years or whatever . Yeah , you say that now .

start is started out being kind of what the ambitions of the crassie high , but Like every Aaron spelling series , it just evolved into soap opera antics .

And then you start becoming an adult after college And it's pretty practical , and then , after like like half a season of the like , screw this , let's have people blow up and Stab each other right in the backs and everyone sleep with each other . Yeah , people coming back from the dead , all that stuff . And that became Melrose . What , what ?

Yeah , you know how it is . And someone dies . And then suddenly you're back Oh no , i'm a twin sister or something like that . You know , oh , right , right , yeah , they bring the actor back . I mean , i'm not gonna lie , i'm not gonna lie , i'm not gonna lie . Oh right , right , yeah , they bring the actor back , whatever . Yeah , i got those , i got those .

Yeah , i mean , i remember the early episodes of melrose was like one of the plot points was this guy defaulting on his student loans , and I guess it wasn't soap opera enough . Right , right , all right , we'll return to the podcast after this message .

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Duma , love clean dumas . And sexly , sexly , sexily amy , sexily Emily . All right , guys , you've done with this enough . All right , till next time , stay spooky .