ABC News’ solo reporter in Korea Joohee Cho creatively uses the word “popular” to describe adultery in Korea, a peculiar word choice to describe extramarital sex habits and misleading when one reads this statistic in the first paragraph:
In an online survey last year by monthly women’s magazine Woman Sense, 79 percent of married men and 15.5 percent of married women in their 30s and 40s admitted adultery.
If the results of the online survey are valid, it would more precise to say that adultery is ‘popular’ among men, not women. Joohee Cho’s report completely ignores the existence of prostitution as a factor in the high rate of extramarital sex among men, limiting the description of adultery in South Korea to affairs.
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Do I have this right – for every five men, there’s one woman stepping out? That sounds high, but what do I know.
Why would she be not reporting/denying prostitution as a source of this, unless she’s got more than one ax to grind?
With all the barber poles and anmas and such here, I don’t doubt the figure for the men is right, or thereabouts.
But I think the figure for women is understated. Even with an anonymous survey, I can see Korean women lying about their sexual histories.
Darth,
I meant to mention earlier – the avatar is muy fantastico. I want to call him Japanese Larry, but earlier maps have him as Chosun Jimmy.
That’s Takeshi (Beat) Kitano from one of his comedy shows… the show where I got my “Sith” name.
Wow, a lot of Korean women lied then.
I don’t think it’s out of line for ABC to run something like this. Adultery isn’t ubiquitous (sorry), but it’s surprisingly common, and the tolerance of prostitution plays a role in keeping the numbers up.
She’s the same Joohee Cho who wrote, or at least oversaw, that interesting ‘travel’ article a couple months ago which essentially amounted to labeling Western English teachers as low-class, drug-smuggling, womanising scoundrels. Good to see she’s true to form with her generalisations and selective reporting.
Psst,… use .
Don’t use [ and ].
Dammit… the angle brackets don’t show up
A little HTML elf has fixed the link format.
Elves have moved from anonymously repairing shoes to anonymously repairing HTML? Is this what modernization has done? Killed the elf shoe repair business?
I thank the elf for making the corrections, I won’t use [ ] anymore!
#6,
What I’m getting from this is that Koreans should marry Western English teachers if they don’t want a sexless marriage. LOL
Darth, its not killed the show repair business, just allowed for diversification.
precise would be “more popular amongst men” since I think 15.5% would fit most peoples idea of popular.
“Popular” is a strange word choice to describe the prevalence of adultery. A more suitable word would be “common,” and given the lopsided statistic, “common among men” would be more precise. I wonder if Joohee Cho doesn’t think sex with prostitutes counts as adultery. It’s not an affair, but it is adultery as most English speakers understand the word albeit in a Biblical sense, only married women can be guilty of adultery.
Well, by all means, then, let’s bring back that old time religion.
Sonagi, I’m a little unsure here. On the one hand, this lady Cho probably learned English in a sigifnicant capacity late in her life as a second language, which could explain the awkward wording of her writing, if indeed it is entirely her writing. On the other hand, I’m sure her editor would have mentioned it to her if in fact the word “popular” was strange enough to warrant a replacement. My guess is that the word perfectly captured her main thesis in the article, which was that adultery has by and large become a non-serious issue that people talk about as just another hobby. So long as of course it doesn’t happen to them
The reporter is most likely not a native speaker of English, but even writing by educated native speakers needs proofreading by an attentive editor. Given the overall poor quality of the story – a hodge-podge of a court case, a statistic, and a few anecdotes weakly strung together – I’d say the US editor dropped the ball by letting this one through. The lack of coherence and supporting details reflect Korean journalistic standards; stories and generalizations are often built around a couple of anecdotes or examples.
extra-marital sex with the risk of being publicly exposed, tried and jailed for it? That’s just too awesome!!!
C’mon kids, do some adultery! All the cool kids already are! Don’t you want to be adventurous, cool and risque like everyone else?
Don’t YOU want to be cool?
“But conceptually an affair is more often considered a rebelliously courageous and romantic act than a morally despicable betrayal.”
dead on
For those citing easy prostitution as a cause for the high numbers, is that implying that most men, given the chance, would commit adultery? Also, I wonder if those who would commit adultery but don’t have the options are any better. Men aren’t that bad…
I think most people in committed relationships think about having sex with other partners. Whether or not they act on those desires depends on the degree of sexual satisfaction with their partner, their views on the acceptability of extramarital sex, and the availability of desirable alternatives.
In such cases, how do they define adultery? It is strictly intercourse, or is going to a business club and feeling up the girls adultery? Or going to a barber pole for a rub and tug?
I agree with most of what Sonagi has raised here, and with her general opinion of Ms Cho, based on past works. But I would note that this piece is an ABC blog item, rather than a straight-up article. Media outlets that permit or encourage their reporters to blog tend to have less-demanding requirements for attribution and sourcing, with more latitude for personal views.
Thanks for the clarification, Slim. The blog post got my attention because it appeared on the front page of the ABC News homepage, listed together with regular news stories. I think the salacious title appealed to whomever selected it for the front page.
Perhaps too late for this comment to be noticed, but Koreans have explained to me that prostitution is not defined as adultery under Korean law. Apparently two conditions need to be met: sex AND some kind of sustained emotional contact, whether it be meetings, letters, SMSs, emails, whatever.
If either is lacking, it cannot be proven as adultery.
Any lawyers out there who can add to this?
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