11:45 AM
Don’t wanna get AIDS? Masturbate!
The image above with Cho PD (whose face is the only one I recognize out of the bunch.. fail K-pop fan) is a poster for the recently held “Love Yourself, Stop AIDS” concert. The message they’re trying to promote? A nationwide, government-backed campaign to cease the spread of AIDS by encouraging Koreans to seek sexual satisfaction with, well, themselves. According to the Dokdo Times,
While the campaign may be something of a shot in the dark, the Ministry of Health have high hopes that masturbation might be the answer to Korea’s problems, although foreign critics say it hasn’t helped so far. But the Ministry argue that this is the first time that the government will take a hands-on approach towards supporting masturbation in Korea … A number of conservative-leaning civic groups have quietly applauded the move, saying that aside from fighting AIDS, masturbation is the only way their male members can have sex with an equal in Korea.
*In bold are the parts that made me spit my OJ all over my laptop
Victims of AIDs and other STDs are highly stigmatized in South Korea, and comparably more serious than that in other advanced nations. Statistics summarized in an article by Korea Times reflect such premises:
In the 2009 survey, 45.3 percent of the respondents said they wouldn’t allow their children to have an HIV positive person as a classmate — it is a decrease from 2003’s 50.4 percent, but still far higher than 20.7 percent among French people in a survey conducted in 1992 and 33 percent among Belgians in 1993.
Some 35 percent also said such people should be segregated from society, while 5.6 percent of French and 4.7 percent of Belgians thought so about a decade ago.
The survey showed such discrimination has made 33.2 percent of people with HIV or AIDS live separately from their family or severe family ties. About two fifths of such people quit their jobs, and about half of them did so out of depression or fear that co-workers would find out.
This sad reality is a result of prevalent misconceptions and beliefs about AIDS, including it being a so-called “Western Plague” (the number of AIDS victims started rising considerably since the 1980s, the same period of which there was also an increase in multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism in the country). And, apparently so, coupled with the strongly-held beliefs of the health wonders packed in kimchi (no, really. Really), Koreans simply do not get AIDS. And if you do, I guess that means there’s something wrong with you, and you ought to be placed in some isolated island segregated from the rest of ‘normal’ society.
Seemingly so, it isn’t the the relative lack of knowledge and education about sex, sexual responsibility and contraception that is interpreted as the root of this problem, but rather, people having sex out and about. Oh, and uncircumcised penises.
Again, good intentions, but an incomplete, beat-around-the-bush approach.
On a side note, I believe our precious derp babies Block B performed at this concert.
