"Sek-shee"

Add-On Story, adult ESL class:

“His girlfriend broke up with him.
He was very sad.
So I bought him a pet cow.
I think a pig is better than a cow.
I think a cow is better than a pig, because beef is more expensive.”

“Sexy,” or in Korean, “Sek-shee,” is a new and elusive concept in South Korea. Much more popular and achievable is “cute.” I think that one of the phrases I found myself uttering the most was, “That’s so cute and Korean.” Fuzzy sheep and monkey hats that tie under the chin, socks with babies whose lips purse out of the fabric, smiling ice cream cone fans, and sunny side up post-it notes are the norm. Baskin Robbins servers wearing little white elf hats are cute. Pop songs and music videos are cute. Young couples are sickeningly cute.

Because sexiness is so new in Korea, it is taboo for couples to kiss or walk with their arms around each others’ waists in public. They don’t gaze lustily into each others’ eyes. Instead, they just walk around being cute. They hold hands. They flirt. The boy makes fun of the girl and then she pouts in a squeaky voice. I don’t know how Korea gets away with this one, but matching couple shirts are cool. They are omnipresent – couples wearing T-shirts with matching corny love quips, couples wearing matching polo shirts, couples wearing matching winter coats, couples wearing matching sneakers. It was horrifyingly cute. Sexuality is a funny thing, though, and it would spring up in places and in ways I never expected in Korea.

For a woman to bear shoulders in Korea is scorned, although some youth can probably pull it off. They do not wear low cut shirts or tank tops, even if they are exercising outdoors. Once, I was spending the night in traditional Korean housing with my friends, ‘Anchovy Poop,’ and they were joking that with Okhee’s perm all mussed up and the fake long eyelashes she had glued on for the month she was looking pretty sexy. To complete the picture, I reached over and pulled her T-shirt collar down over one shoulder, and one of the younger women shrieked and grabbed her friend’s arm in disbelief. They had a good laugh about it, but it was something they would have never considered doing. Before I knew that shoulders were such a faux-pas, I went exploring my town in a tank top. A Korean pulled over and tried to take me home, not because he thought I was a good catch, but because he was an old man thinking I was a prostitute. Woops. And yet, mini-skirts are A-OK. While a shoulder might imply prostitution, a skirt ending just below where the cheek meets the thigh means a chic young lady.

That prostitution is so acceptable also seems a contradiction to the taboo of sexuality in Korea. Although every little kiss is hidden from the public eye, everyone knows that the buildings with double-striped spinning barber shop poles along highly trafficked streets are not actually barber shops. It is understood that many young men pay for a prostitute before entering the army for two years after high school where it might be hard to meet a nice girl. Even some singing rooms have pretty ladies that men can rent to sing with and enjoy.

Although it is not discussed, men are not the only ones who have fun before tying the knot. When I asked a co-teacher if she’d had sex before marriage, she replied, “Of course!” It seems to be a little bit more rare than in the U.S., though, and I’m not sure if this more traditional thinking about sex or if it’s simply because they tend to live with their parents until marriage. There is a solution to this problem, however, for those youngsters who wish to do the deed, or even for those who wish to cheat on their spouses. It’s called a ‘love motel.’

When I traveled to another town for a week in the winter to teach an English camp, the Korean government put me up in a lovely motel. It had red mood lighting, plastic ivy in the overhead light fixture, a pornography channel on the television, and a spotty couch. There were even ropes hanging down over the entrance of the parking garage to conceal the license plates of the men parked there from their wives! When my parents came to visit me, I was sure to find them an equally accommodating place to stay. Before they arrived, I tried to make a reservation at the Mirage (pronounced Miragy), but when I told the receptionist that I needed a room for 5 nights, she simply said “OK” without typing or writing anything down. Apparently, not very many people book the Mirage in advance, or for five days straight. Although it lacked the ivy and the spots on the couch, I had no doubts what the Mirage was. When I was walking down the alley to the entrance, three of my students from the previous school year saw me and waved. As I turned red and waved back, they stifled a giggle as they hurried past.

Even prostitution and love motels are a fairly contained space for sex in Korean culture. What really shocked me was the school talent show. Any form of sexual expression, or really any expression, is jailed up by the long gray skirts and pants of the school uniform, the dress code limiting hair length and banning makeup or accessories, and, in some classes, separation of girls’ and boys’ seating. At the school festival, though, no uniforms were required. And they were allowed to dance. After the initial shock of watching my naïve middle school girls undulating in cut-off skirts and heels, I went on stage for a cheesy performance, with eight cavalier 6th graders as my back-up singers, of “Where Is the Love?” (which was nowhere in the league of embarrassment that I felt at the 8th grade graduation ceremony in which my co-teachers dressed me in too-small red bellbottoms, a sequined scarf, and a fro and made me sing ‘Dancing Queen’). Following my act was Ms. Lee, the notoriously strict P.E. teacher who sat next to me in the teacher’s lounge in an Adidas sweatsuit reviewing her dance moves when the other teachers weren’t around. She walked onto the stage in a hot pink, midriff flaunting belly dance outfit. Every student began to cheer as she started to shake her hips. Before the song was over, she had shimmied, writhed, and gotten down on all fours to pelvic thrust. For the grand finale, eight gussied up students joined her onstage.

By far the most absurd outlet of Korean sexuality I was fortunate enough to witness was Hyesindang Park. For my birthday, four of my friends joined me for the excursion to Samcheok. Even though Samcheok is a small remote area in the northeast province, it is well-known for its beaches, a cave, and most notoriously... the Penis Park. According to the legend, a virgin drowned off of the coast of Samcheok. Since her death, the fishermen were bringing up empty hooks. After they urinated, though, they found that the fish were abundant. In order to please the virgin and sustain their luck, they dedicated a park to the girl. A park full of penises. Hyesindang Park was a pinnacle of masculinity and sex. Immense wooden penises sprouted from the ground in traditional and abstract forms, sometimes with Zodiac animals carved into the staff or nails hammered into it or even a fetus resting inside attached by an umbilical rope. You could sit on penis benches, hit a penis gong, and of course, gawk at the giant phallus cannon that bobbed up and down over a trickle of a waterfall. We frolicked among the erect statues until we found ourselves standing on the coast in awe. Suddenly, not a penis was in sight, except for a questionable lighthouse. We dove into the crisp water, dodging sea urchins and scrambling over rocks and accepting a plate of freshly caught sushi from the only others enjoying the scene, a group of teenagers fishing and cooking ramen on a hotpot. In a way, Hyesindang Penis Park seemed like the least Korean place I had ever seen, so out of place in the land of innocent monkey hats and ice cream fans. But in a way, it fit perfectly in the country that never failed to surprise me with its randomness and absurdity.