Premarital sex no clue to marriage: 83% of girls surveyed

Eight out of 10 girls at junior high schools do not think that they have to marry if they have had a sexual intercourse before a marriage, according to a survey.

According to the survey of 2,824 students at junior high schools by Prof. Kim Sang-Won of the Educational Graduate School of Kyonggi University at the request of the Juvenile Protection Committee, 5.8 percent of the respondents said that they had had sexual intercourse. The sex experience ratio was 7.5 percent for schoolboys and 4.4 percent for schoolgirls.

It is the first time in Korea that a ¡°sex white paper¡± on junior high school students to study their attitudes about sex and the pattern of their sex-related activities, has been produced. In particular, 83.3 percent of the schoolgirls said they did not think that they had to marry if they had sexual intercourse, and just 13.3 percent replied that they have to marry in such a case.

About 32.9 percent said they had their first sexual intercourse when they were second-year students in junior high school, and 76.8 percent replied they did not use birth control. Of them, 0.8 percent had a pregnancy experience and settled the problem through abortion (71.4 percent) or adoption (28.6 percent) after delivery.

About 22.3 percent of the total schoolgirls said they had an experience of suffering from a sexual attack or violence, and the persons selected for consultations on their sex-related agony were friends (35.3 percent), consulting experts (25.1 percent) and parents (18.0 percent). Those who committed sexual attacks were strangers (39 percent) they met in a subway or bus, acquaintances (29.3 percent), persons they met accidentally (14.6 percent), and friends of the opposite sex (5.9 percent), indicating that much damages came from those in close relations.

About 41.3 percent of the respondents said they were dating members of the opposite sex, and the dating (20.2 percent) was the biggest stress they faced, followed by sex drive (4.5 percent), pregnancy and abortion (4.3 percent), sexual intercourse (2.4 percent), and masturbation (1.8 percent), according to the survey.

Chung Seong-Hee shchung@donga.com