There is a particular kind of silence in South Korea around women's bodies — not the silence of ignorance, but the silence of design. For generations, girls in this country have been handed their sexual education in the form of shame, whisper, and consequence. They have learned about their bodies not in classrooms, not from trusted adults, not through honest journalism, but through bad experiences: an unwanted pregnancy, a diagnosis delivered by a doctor who can barely meet their eyes, a partner who calls a condom an inconvenience.
I know this silence. I have lived inside it.
I have worked as a reporter and as an announcer. I have stood in front of cameras and put my voice to stories that matter. And all the while, I have also simply been a woman in South Korea — navigating the same system of incomplete knowledge and coded shame that every woman here navigates. The gap between what I was told and what I needed to know has never stopped feeling alarming. It took years before I understood that this gap was not accidental. It was a white space. And white spaces, in journalism, are not absences — they are invitations.
The numbers behind this section are not comfortable to read.
According to the Korean National Survey on Sexual Consciousness, a nationally representative study of 2,500 adults, regular condom use with a relationship partner stands at just 14.8%.¹ Even with casual partners, consistent condom use reaches only 39.6%.¹ A 2021 survey by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs found that a mere 18% of men report having no reservations about using condoms — among the lowest figures in the developed world.² Studies of Korean college students found that only 25–38% of young people used condoms consistently, a gap that directly correlates with 17.1% of young Koreans contracting sexually transmitted infections.³
On abortion, the picture is similarly stark — and made more difficult to read by the absence of mandatory reporting. Estimates from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) put the annual number of abortions at approximately 32,063 in 2020, a rise from a low of 23,175 in 2018, occurring against the backdrop of a country that already records the world's lowest birth rate.⁴ A 2021 national survey by the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS) found that only 36.3% of people aged 19–49 reported always using contraception, and just 19.3% said they mostly did — with the average age of sexual activity onset recorded at 14.1 years.⁵
On sexually transmitted infections, a population-based analysis covering 2010–2021 using national health insurance data found that viral STIs rose continuously over the decade. By 2021, genital herpes had reached a prevalence of 254.54 per 100,000 persons — the highest of any tracked STI — while anogenital warts showed the steepest rate of increase of any infection in the study period.⁶ Among adolescents and young adults specifically, chlamydia (C. trachomatis) and gonorrhea (N. gonorrhoeae) carry the highest burden, a pattern confirmed across more than 1.4 million PCR tests conducted between 2021 and 2024.⁷
These numbers are not embarrassments. They are dispatches from a system that is consistently failing people. They are the measurable cost of the silence I described.
When I proposed this section, I was asked — as I expected to be — whether this was really journalism, or whether it was something else: advocacy, perhaps, or the kind of soft social content more suited to a women's magazine than a newsroom. I understood the question. I also knew the answer.
Journalism is the business of telling people what they need to know. It is the business of shining light into spaces that have been deliberately or carelessly kept dark. By that definition, there is no subject more urgently in need of a desk, a beat, a section, and a name than this one.
For too long, Korean media has either avoided sexuality entirely or engaged with it only through the lens of scandal — a celebrity caught, a law violated, a behavior condemned. What we have almost never done is treat sex and sexuality as subjects deserving of the same rigorous, respectful, evidence-based coverage we give to economics, politics, or public health. And yet, sex is public health. It is politics. It is economics. It is the intimate infrastructure of how people live.
What this section will do is simple, though it has apparently been too difficult to do until now.
We will report on reproductive health with accuracy and without euphemism. We will cover STIs as the public health issue they are, not as moral judgments. We will speak to gynecologists, urologists, sex educators, psychologists, and researchers, and we will translate their knowledge into language that belongs to everyone. We will cover policy — contraception access, sex education curricula, abortion law — as the political matter it is. We will give Korean women, men, and people of all identities the information about their own bodies that they were never given in school.
We will not sensationalize. We will not moralize. We will not whisper.
I think often about the girls who are in school right now in this country — the ones who will learn about sex the way I did, the way most of us did, from rumor and accident and too-late realization. I think about the woman who discovers a symptom and spends three weeks convincing herself it is nothing, because she has never been taught that her body is a subject she is allowed to take seriously. I think about the couples who do not know how to talk about contraception because no one ever showed them that it was something people talked about.
This section is for them. It is, perhaps, also a little bit for the younger version of me — the girl who deserved better information and a media that took her seriously.
She deserved a section like this. We are building it now.
The Sex & Sexuality desk publishes every Thursday. Tips, questions, and story suggestions can be sent to evelynjenny@quantumadmissions.com.
Footnotes
¹ Regular condom use rates of 14.8% (relationship partner) and 39.6% (casual partner) are from the Korean National Survey on Sexual Consciousness. See Endnote i.
² The 18% figure for men with no reservations about condom use is from a 2021 KIHASA survey of 2,500 adults. See Endnote ii.
³ The 25–38% consistent condom-use range among college students, and the resulting 17.1% STI rate among young Koreans, are drawn from an integrative review of studies on condom use among Korean college students. See Endnote iii.
⁴ Abortion figures (23,175 in 2018; 26,985 in 2019; 32,063 in 2020) are KIHASA survey estimates. Because abortion reporting in South Korea is not mandatory and the legal framework remains unsettled following decriminalization in 2021, these are estimates derived from periodic surveys of women aged 15–49, not administrative records. Actual figures may be higher. See Endnote iv.
⁵ Contraception use rates and age of sexual onset are from a 2021 KOSIS survey of 8,500 women aged 15–49. See Endnote v.
⁶ STI prevalence figures are from a 2025 population-based analysis of Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service data, covering 2010–2021. See Endnote vi.
⁷ Young adult STI burden data are from a 2024–2025 epidemiological study of 1.4 million multiplex PCR tests conducted in Korea between 2021 and 2024. See Endnote vii.
Endnotes
i. Ahn ST, et al. "Analysis of Sexual Behaviors among Adults in Korea: Results from the 'Korean National Survey on Sexual Consciousness.'" World Journal of Men's Health 39, no. 2 (April 2021): 366–375. https://doi.org/10.5534/wjmh.190137. PubMed PMID: 32202083. The study used a nationally representative probability sample of 2,500 individuals (1,273 men and 1,227 women), aged 18–69 years, selected via stratified multiple-stage sampling based on Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) data.
ii. Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA). Survey data cited in: "Why many South Korean women are exposed to unwanted pregnancies and STIs." Aju Press, March 7, 2025. https://www.ajupress.com/view/20250307095428241. The survey covered 2,500 adults; reasons given for not using condoms included inconvenience, discomfort, and reduced pleasure.
iii. Park S, et al. "An integrative review of studies of condom use among Korean college students." PMC / PubMed Central, 2021. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8650878/. Cites Lee [ref. 20 within that study] for the 25.0–38.2% appropriate condom use range, and ref. [11] for the 17.1% STI rate among young Koreans.
iv. Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA). National survey data reported in: "Decriminalizing abortion did not reverse declining trend in Korea." The Korea Herald, June 30, 2022. https://m.koreaherald.com/article/2899318. The KIHASA survey (November–December 2021) covered 8,500 women aged 15–49. Estimated annual abortion figures: 241,411 (2008), 23,175 (2018), 26,985 (2019), 32,063 (2020).
v. Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS), 2021 data. Cited in: "Unsafe abortion remains a problem in South Korea, in spite of the recent decriminalization." International Health Policies, January 19, 2024. https://www.internationalhealthpolicies.org/featured-article/unsafe-abortion-remains-a-problem-in-south-korea-in-spite-of-the-recent-decriminalization/. Data points: 36.3% always use contraception; 19.3% mostly use contraception; average age of sexual activity onset: 14.1 years; age group surveyed: 19–49.
vi. Kim J, et al. "Recent Changes in Sexually Transmitted Infection in Korea: A Population-Based Analysis." Journal of Clinical Medicine 14, no. 14 (2025): 5145. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/14/14/5145. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12295904/. Data source: Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRAS), 2010–2021. Genital herpes prevalence in 2021: 254.54 per 100,000 persons. Anogenital warts (AGW) recorded the highest rate of increase of any STI tracked over the study period.
vii. Lee SH, et al. "Epidemiologic Characteristics of 1.4 Million Multiplex PCR Tests for 12 Urogenital and Sexually Transmitted Infection Pathogens in Korea (2021–2024)." PMC, 2025. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12655634/. Total tests: 311,478 (2021), 355,881 (2022), 378,051 (2023), 374,021 (2024). C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae were most prevalent in adolescents and young adults (p < 0.0001).