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Officials of regional governments are running “speed meetings” for single men and women who want to get married.
While speed dating is not new in Korea, mass blind dates set up by local government officials are. “The Bible says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you,’” said Kang Hee-bok, the mayor of the city of Asan, two hours south of Seoul in South Chungcheong.
Twenty nervous-looking unmarried men and 20 equally anxious unmarried women listened attentively in the banquet hall of a local hotel last Saturday afternoon. “Marriage is a rough journey, but only when you’re in it can you taste all that’s sweet and bitter in life,” continued the mayor.
Commercial dating companies charge around 150,000 won ($147.60) per person for speed dating. The event hosted by the Asan government was free. The “date” began with each of the 20 couples, all from Asan, sitting at separate tables. “What do you do on your day off?” one man asked his partner. “Umm ... I usually go to the movies,” a woman seated next to him replied with a shy smile.
To improve the chances of a successful match, the organizers make sure that the first person each participant meets is the best match in the room. Marriage guidance counselors from the Asan government have already analyzed everyone’s age, interests, hometowns, education background and so on.
Noh Gyeong-seon of Sunoo, a marriage consulting firm that helped organize the Asan event, claims that the first person you meet at a speed date is often the most memorable.
But even if the couples meet their perfect match, they have to move on to another person after five minutes. The aim is for every male to meet every female for five minutes of small talk. Officials say this mass date is a golden opportunity for these young people.
“An average single Korean goes on seven to eight blind dates a year,” said Lee Ung-jin, the president of Sunoo. “Speed dating is tiring, but it’s also a rare opportunity to look beyond obvious charms such as looks and eloquence and give everyone a chance.”
At the end of the four-hour event, the organizers claimed that eight couples had decided to go on another date with each other. Whether that date will lead to wedding bells and even to the patter of tiny feet, as the Asan government hopes, is another issue.
The problem in Korea is that an increasing number of Koreans are souring on the idea of marriage and raising a family. Many young people say the cost of childcare and education makes bringing up a child a daunting prospect. The National Statistical Office’s data shows that the marriage rate ? the number of marriages divided by 1,000 people ? decreased to 7 percent last year from 9.6 percent in 1991.
Meanwhile, people are getting married later: The average age for marriage went up to 29.6 last year from 27 in 1996. More worrying, Korea’s fertility rate stood at 1.26 last year. The average fertility rate in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is 1.6.
Korea’s statistical bureau predicts that the nation will become a super-aged society in 2030. Senior citizens aged over 65 will account for 24.2 percent of the total population. Last year, the figure was 9.1 percent.
To read the rest of the article joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2892660
July 23, 2008
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