These are the few embarrassing questions that general undergraduate students are likely to have, but the examples are hard to openly discuss with others. Korea University (KU) students are not an exception concerning the problem. In the bulletin for Love Consultant in Koreapas, nearly one fourth of the posts is related to sexual matters. The internet community’s users ardently debate on sexual matters and share the information online. Some of the posts even receive more than one hundred comments. The problem, however, is that the board floods with myths and incorrect beliefs.

 

For university students, the major means of getting sexual knowledge is via the internet, which is unfortunately a melting pot of unproved information. Therefore, it is more reliable when students collect the sources through university courses. For example, all KU students have to take the lecture, Freshmen Seminar. This onecredit lecture is a graduation requirement, and evaluated by pass or fail, which is neither hard nor burdensome. One of the seven classes of Freshmen Seminar is Enrichment Program about Gender and Sex, dealing with education about gender and sexual matters related to the overall university life, provided by the Institute for General Education in KU.

 

To many students’ disappointment, neither class satisfies students’ demand. Baek Seung Yoon (’15, Political Science and Economics) reviewed, “I felt that the class only dealt with superficial and common sexual knowledge.” He also added, “I felt that KU held the class just to show that the school follows the regulation. It seems like the class was a mere window dressing.”

 

The Enrichment Program about Gender and Sex is the only mandatory sex education class offered to KU students. Seldom, general studies such as Scientific Understanding on Sex, Gender and Society, and Philosophical Understanding of Sex and Desire deal with sexual issues, but these lectures are more prone to illustrating sex in the terms of other studies like physiology, sociology, or philosophy and fail to provide knowledge about practical sex. 

 

Meanwhile, the Center for Gender Equality, KU’s official institute to take care of sexual matters, exerts strenuous efforts to make up for the lack of sex education class in KU. The center, which was once called the Sexual Abuse Counseling Center, earned its current name in 2006, extending its service to sex education and campaigns about sound sex. No Jeong Min, the counselor of the center, introduced, “Previously, the center was focused on treatment after sexual abuse, but since the revision, it now concentrates on sex education to elevate the consciousness of the issue at KU.” It not only provides elective programs and various contents to KU students but also educates KU faculties mandatorily, who have the power to affect students directly.

 

Some of the educational programs at the center are as follows: Seminar for Fostering Gender Equality, Enrichment Program about Sex, and Education about Preventing Recurrence. Among the programs, the most representative ones are done by the Student Supporters of the center, Yang Ji. The name Yang Ji is the abbreviation of the Korean name, meaning the keeper of gender equality. Yang Ji consists of both male and female students who are deeply interested in gender and sex, taking 16 hours of lectures about gender and sex during working as supporters and delivering campaigns to share the information with other students.

 

The campaigns are held two times every year, one at the Liberal Arts and Humanities Campus in May and the other at the Science and Engineering campus in September. The center designates the campaign week as the Gender and Sex Culture Week and held various programs. Counselor No said, “For instance, with the supporters’ help, KU students got to know more about women’s menstruation by making alternative sanitary pads. It was well-received by the students.” On a practical level, students learned in person about how to use condoms and how to accurately calculate menstruation cycle. Considering that traditional sex education classes just feed information to learners, the campaign takes one step forward. 

 

Yet, the campaign is only held once a semester and lasts for one or two days. In addition, since the campaigns are only confined to offline promotion, beneficiaries are also limited. Those who already know about the center can access the service in alternative ways, but the problem arises for those who are not aware of its existence. No confessed, “Since the center is located in the Dongwon Global Leadership Hall, the physical distance between the center and the Science and Engineering campus hinders the familiarity of the center.”

 

Apparently, there are no sufficient programs and classes concerning sex information to meet students’ needs. The university lacks both number of class and profundity compared to other universities such as Ewha Womans University, which has organized systems that students can learn the subject like Women’s Studies further in the graduate school. No suggested, “KU still has a long way to go to cultivate a sound sex culture. Until now, the university has been dependent on the Center for Gender Equality entirely, but I hope that some other center or program would be made so that students and faculties can widely acknowledge the importance of sound sex.”