▲ Photo courtesy ArtsyBee

Housewife Mrs. Kim has been taking medicine for depression for one year. Mrs. Kim is depressed because of her husband 's affair. Her husband had an affair with a colleague for three years. She was a married woman.

It seems like he invited her to their home while Mrs. Kim went to visit her parent’s house with her son. She said, “I never noticed this relationship until her husband told me about it.”

Now Mrs. Kim is seriously considering divorcing her husband. But she is hesitating to make a decision because of her son. She said, “Should I divorce him or forgive him?” and sighed, “I feel like I'm in hell.”

According to the Korean Kinsey Report in 2016, which was run by Lina Korea and the Korean Institute for Sexual and Couple's Health and surveyed 1090 adult males and females, 50.8 percent of men and 9.3 percent of women have had an affair. This includes prostitution.

According to the survey 42.3% of men in their 30s, 48.4% of men in their forties, 52.5% of men in their fifties, and 56.7% of those in their 60s have had an affair.

Dr. Kang from the Korean Institute for Sexual and Couple's Health points out that the male menopause that appears in the mid 40s is one of the main reasons.

He said, "We think that because men in menopause experience psychological emptiness and physical atrophy they wouldn’t think about having an affair. But in reality, many men try something new and fresh to stimulate themselves and they think they become rejuvenated by having an affair.”


Is prostitution not an affair?

▲ Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

According to the Korean Kinsey Report in 2016, 213 men were asked how many women they had had an affair with. The average number was 11.46 women with men in their 50s reportedly having had an affair with an average of 12.4 women. Out of the 34 women who were asked, the average number of men they had had an affair with was 3.62 men.

The reason for the high numbers seems to be prostitution. Especially, many men think that prostitution is not an affair. Of the male respondents, 40.5% men think that having sex with a prostitute is not having an affair and 15.1% of women think in the same way.

Accordingly, the 43.3% of respondents who thought that prostitution equaled having an affair answered that they had had an affair, while only 20.9% of those who didn’t think that prostitution was the same as an affair answered that they had had an affair. So, depending on how married couples look at prostitution, the result of the rate of an affair is far different.

According to the report, it is said that the prostitution is so prevalent in Korean society that people tend to say, “I am not the only one doing this. Why should I feel guilty?” Still many Korean men don’t take prostitution seriously and get confused about prostitution and affair.

Dr. Kang said, "Men don’t think that prostitution is a crime due to receiving the wrong sex education. Especially, women tend to have an affair after the marriage completely fell apart, whereas men have an affair habitually even though he maintains a stable relationship with his wife. It is important to correct the misunderstanding of men’s concept of prostitution .”