Thread by @JakeKwon88

My latest:
South Korea’s appeal: Why Western women are heading there in search of love
cnn.com/travel/article…

This story was inspired by the "international couple" content, which mostly involved Korean men with his white girlfriend, that tiktok algorithm started pushing on me a couple years ago.

In 2017, Indiana U researcher Min Joo Lee discovered particular genre of tourists in Seoul - late teen to early 20s women, mostly from North America and Europe, who stay in hostels and only go out to bars/clubs and dates. They were in Korea primarily to date Korean men.

Korean TV shows has been selling a special brand of Asian men for decades and thanks to Netflix, the reach is now global. Western women who were disappointed by what they see as sex-obsessed dating culture back home, found Korean dating culture refreshing.

One British woman, Grace, told me that Korean men are "gentlemen, polite, charming, romantic, fairytale-like, chivalrous, respectful," while English men are "half drunk, holding a beer, holding a dead fish," that last one referring to the Tinder bio she sees back home.

Grace is not the only one. There has been a steady increase of women travelers to Korea, mostly from Asia at first, and now from the rest of the world. In 2009, total female traveler surpassed male travelers.

Let's look at young Western travelers. Though there is no visitor stat by country+age+sex, we can look at stats for student and working holiday visa holders (and thus mostly under 30) from outside of Asia. The women outpaced men since 2017.

These stats are from before the pandemic and the number drops off in 2020 as international travel became near impossible. But during that time, online dating contents boomed. Which brings us back to the Korean guy + white girl contents flooding Instagram, youtube and Tiktok.

Please read the story for more.

For further reading, here is Min Joo Lee's original story that provides wonderful context into the soft-appeal of Korean men and more detailed experience of her research.

theconversation.com/why-some-women…

And this story for discovering horniness for Gong Yoo

vulture.com/article/squid-…

And you can follow this instagram of Wonho, a Korean artist who often posts thirst-trap, I mean, healthy workout selfies.
instagram.com/iwonhoyou/?hl=…

Also special thanks to @MyKoreanHusband

ps. This is one of those where I wish we didn't limit ourselves to 1500 words. There were many bits that I found interesting but could not include for length.

For example, while these women are traveling to Korea for Korean dating experience that they've seen on TV, their experience will be limited from outset. Korean dating norm centers around blind date set up by mutual friend (So-gae-ting) or from friendship in school or work.

Koreans don't meet partners in bars or dating apps because they don't trust strangers to act respectfully. Yet foreign travelers are limited to those places where they must interact with Koreans in a very western context.

I also did not go into the abuses and sexual crimes that exists in Korea. Often, anonymous posts appear on Reddit or Facebook groups by a foreigner asking for advice on abusive behavior from their Korean partner. "Is this a cultural misunderstanding?," they usually ask.

To expand on Quandra's experience, Min Joo Lee notes that Korean beauty standard favors light skin and blue eyes and blonde hair. She observed that one night white women from Sweden and Switzerland were getting approached constantly while a black woman did not.

Quandra would not call it racism but she says it's a clear colorism. While women of all colors would come to Korea following their romantic dreams, it's the white women who wins.

Another perspective missing in the story is that of the Korean men and their fetish of foreign women. The women interviewed for the story told me that Korean men often described foreign women as "open minded," which they understood to be a code for being open to casual sex.

I have heard over the years from some Korean men that westerners are quicker to sex. Compared to Korea's cultural norm where long term relationships are a prerequisite for sex. The belief may come from the rampant casual sex depicted on American media.

On Korean online communities with mostly male users, where at times images of white women are shared, the users often compare them to local women, saying that they are more beautiful, less demanding and independent.

p.p.s. The story isn't moralizing these women. It is universal that women want a respectful partner and some who found it in Korean media would travel there naturally. And some of them did find their loving partner like the vloggers in the story.

Though the initial cultural clash may be rough, many interviewees were hopeful that this will eventually lead to a stronger cultural understanding between worlds.

Also, saw some people wondering if the men are being victimized here. I don’t know. But the men in Korea doesn’t seem to care about why. It’s important for them that they are being pursued at all.