[KS] words on Sex in Korean

Cheng Sea Ling c0cheng at hotmail.com
Sun Nov 2 11:26:20 EST 2003


I work on issues of sexuality in Korea, and am currently looking at an 
anti-AIDS campaign for young people. Going through the transcript of one of 
its lecture in a middle school, I noticed that there was a strong 
distinction made between words 'seong'성' and 'seksi' 섹스. I would like to 
share my thoughts about the distinction and would like to learn more from 
others on the list who are interested. I would of course welcome some 
pointers to relevant literature on the subject.  An apology for the 
mistakes in romanization: I haven't kept up with my romanization and don't 
have a table at hand, so hopefully you can figure out the terms with the 
English translation.  Thank you.

'Seong’ is the formal and public term for sex or anything sexual, such as 
‘sexual relations’ (Seong kwankae), ‘sex customs’ (Seong pongsuk), ‘
sexual intercourse’ (Seong kyu), ‘sexual violence’ (Seong pukhaeng), ‘
sexual behavior’ (Seong haengtae), ‘sex education’ (Seong kyuyuk), ‘
sexual encounter’ (Seong chopjuk), and sex organ (Seonggi). When put side 
by side with love (sarang) and purity (sunkyul), as the anti-AIDS campaign 
does, ‘seong’ refers to monogamous, marital, and reproductive sex that 
buttresses the family as a moral, social and sexual unit. In other words, 
it belongs to the propriety code of the public sphere. 

‘Seksi’ (‘sex’) - this foreign-sounding word connotes improper sex. Its 
association with the titillating and transgressive aspects of sex is so 
strong that the word rarely finds its way into official sex education 
discourses or the media except for reports on sexual transgressions. In 
contrast, rather than the word ‘Seong’, ‘seksi’ is almost exclusively 
used in adult-oriented material such as internet-sites. ‘Seksi’ belongs 
to the private, the individual, the modern and by its foreign origin, the 
western, involving desire rather than responsibility, pleasure rather than 
reproduction.

I would of course be interested to see when did 섹스 enter the Korean 
language, in what contexts and with what signification and its 
transformation. 

Thank you for reading this.

Sealing Cheng

Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow
Program for the Study of Gender, Sexuality, Health, and Human Rights
School of Public Health
COlumbia University

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