[Opinion] Old but So in Love

Lee Jong-dae and Kim Jeom-sook have been dating for nine months. When they can`t stay long together, they just miss each other and talk on the phone for hours. Sometimes they have little quarrels and soon say sorry. They even went on a trip lying to their families. They sound just like a typical young couple, but they are in fact a lot older. Lee is 68 and Kim is 56. They lied to their children not to their parents. Their love story was aired nationwide through a KBS TV series `People`s Theater – Proposal.` Movie `I Don`t Mind Dying` was also about an old couple`s love, a controversial one because there was too much sex involved. Their lovemaking was also bold and intimate.

▷Young people thought that love and sex are only for them. Professor Robert Loar, an author of the book `Marriage and Family – Looking for Intimacy,` however, proved that love and all the feelings of love are for everyone and people can experience such feelings again and again. Even with gray hair, they still feel passion and even get jealous and sulky. They are just like teens who feel heaven and hell by the way their loved ones talk and act. “It is like I became a teenager again. I never thought that I could be this way again.” Old couples in the book say. Like a title of a book `You are never too old to feel affection,` there is no `too late` when it comes to love, and for that matter sex.

▷Luciano Pavarotti, a 67-year-old renowned tenor, got his fourth daughter on January 13, surprising many men of his age across the world. Mother of the baby is his former secretary, who is 34 years young than he is. In the U.S., they call `May-December Marriage` when an old man and a young woman or vice versa get married. It is also said that a marriage between a rich old man and a pretty young woman has small chances of failure since they meet the needs of the other. On the day when Pavarotti got his fourth child, singer Nana Mouskouri also married again. She is 56 and seems to be in the mood for her song `Plasir D`Amour (pleasure of love).`

▷Those who watched `People`s Theater` or `I Don`t Mind Dying` say that they now understand old couples in love. Unlike young couples full of confidence that love will win everything, however, old couples, especially men, appear to face two conditions of love – good health and money. Unless they are as vigorous as the old man in the movie `I Don`t Mind Dying` saying “I want a boy” or unless they are rich men as Pavarotti is, it will be hard to win women`s heart. And women might need to have certain charm like Nana Mouskouri for that matter.

Kim Sun-deok, Editorial Writer, yuri@donga.com