Posted on 10/26/2006 5:58:24 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
As tends to be the case in disasters and crises, sales of condoms and reservations at motels surged in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test on Oct. 9. One online hotel reservations site reports that everything is completely booked up through the end of the month in what it calls an “exceptional” flood of guests. If there is apathy about security among Koreans, there is also a silent terror seeking release in sex.
On Oct. 9-15, the average daily sales of condoms across all Family Mart convenience stores was 1,930, a 19.9 percent increase over September’s daily average of 1,610. Compared to the year’s average until September of 1,508, that is an incredible 28 percent increase. Even when the sample period widened from Oct. 9-21, the average stood at a high 1,857. Amazingly, even now more condoms are sold than during the World Cup, which even at its zenith in June only brought daily averages only to 1,751.
Things were no different at other convenience store chains like GS25. Oct. 9-15 daily sales revenues from condoms stood at W3.54 million, a 14.8 percent increase over September and a 12 percent increase over the year’s average through September. Expanding again the sample period to Oct. 9-21, there was an 8.2 percent increase in sales. On days of the World Cup matches against Togo, France and Switzerland, sales figures from condoms were at an average of W3.18 million, only slightly above the norm.
Sales of butane gas and packs of instant noodles -- a sign that people are stockpiling -- also increased, but not to the same extent as condom sales. Year-on-year, sales of butane and ramen jumped 9.6 percent year-on-year and 7.2 percent during the same Oct. 9-15 period.
Hotels and motels are enjoying the tide of customers flowing through their doors. “The top hotels in Gangnam are all booked up, and most of the rooms in motels are gone,” reservations website Hotel VIP says. “Even the increased demand surrounding the Chuseok holiday subsides after one week, so it’s exceptional for the number of hotel guests to continue this high.” In another interesting twist, it has been reported that the hardest place to get a room is the favorite haunt of stock-traders, Yeouido. The tiny island on the Han River has the highest concentration of securities firms most sensitive to the North’s nuke tests. Company chief Kwak says, “Specifically the business hotels in the Yeouido area that run at about W50,000-70,000(US$1=W958) per night are completely booked since last week through Oct. 27.”
Experts offer various explanations. “There has been research showing that following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. citizens also engaged in more sexual encounters than normal,” says Seong Gyeong-won, head of the Korea Institute for Sex Education. “Prof. Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist, insists that as the level of anxiety in a society rises, people are capable of experiencing more passionate desire.”
In 1941, the U.S. military distributed pinup posters to soldiers at the frontlines of the Pacific War to help them dull the horrors of combat. “With all society’s attentions focused on the North Korean nuclear crisis, it’s possible that people’s desire to escape has also increased,” says Lee Yoon-ho of Dongguk University. “When you consider the fact that the majority of people buying condoms at the convenience stores are in their 20s and 30s, it’s entirely possible.”
Yonsei University psychologist Prof. Whang Sang-min says the increase in condom sales isn’t conclusive proof of the state of affairs after the nuclear test, but admits it is interesting. “We have to see this as arising in an atmosphere of uncertainty where something that may affect our society in its entirety has still not become entirely clear.”
(englishnews@chosun.com )
Koreans unfortunately have real bad case of herd mentality. Even when secret ballot is guaranteed, there are people who want to vote for what they think others would. It is difficult to break up this mentality. The result is that people are extremely torn emotionally. One side tells they should quit following the party line, but the other side feels this morbid fear of being left out of the pack and totally isolated.
Their true feeling tends to ooze out indirectly as this little episode shows.
Only the prospect of imminent unmitigated disaster could break this mentality. Then, what can happen is that they could swing to the opposite in a flash. It is like a dam breaking.
Change in Korea tends to be marked by abrupt, almost catastrophic, swing preceded by long excruciating stalemate.
The change in N. Korea would follow the same pattern, IMHO.
Ping!
Bump!
Well if a condom was used it was about something else than human survival. Probably alot of fornication and adulty that just had to be done in case they never got the chance again. What a pick up line.
Initial urge is from survival instinct. However, with condoms, it becomes something else.:-)
this is idiotic. Freud would have a field day with these people.
I guess they're not expecting too many "happy tomorrows".
Condoms to help prevent "fallout"?
The business people that I meet/talk to in Seoul etc are, to a man, selfish! (In my humble opinion.)
Every one of them, after a couple Cass beers or 7, point to Germany as an example. They do not want their economy crashed by suddenly having to absorb NoKorea's malaise upon reunification. They want to keep shipping rice for subsistence, and then everything will be fine.
They do, typically, ridicule Americans and the American arrogance that we seem to want to meddle with such things (such as people starving under a totalitarian regime, and such!)
Can you imagine that they feel smug about it, as a superior way of handling a looming problem?
No amount of education would liberate them from this stupidity. That is for sure. They are not even doing it right. If they have to avoid German problem, there should be a regime change in N. Korea. Otherwise it won't change. N. Korea will go the way of Soviet Union, a bankrupt country armed with nuclear weapons to the teeth, not Deng Xiao-ping's China.
That is what Kim Jong-il is counting on. Such a wishful thinking and cowardly attitude could give an opening he can exploit to perpetuate his dynastic regime, with S. Korea as a cowered vassal state to be absorbed in the future.
The article states that the US military distributed pin-up posters. In 1941.
Questionable I think on both points.
That is possible. Their knowledge on American history could be quite sketchy.
Might very well be how they handle it. It's a fool's way, though!
North Korea doesn't need condoms when they have the 'No-Dong'...
:-P
I don't blame them. I would feel the same way about America absorbing a broken backward country that has no idea what freedom and democracy are all about. The end result would be a net minus.
I heard that in London, during the Blitz, there was a similar phenomenon of women being sexually aroused.
Would Americans have really allowed a North Korea on their borders all this time? Did Teddy Roosevelt let Mexico run willy nilly?
I suppose I could see Cuba as a tiny example of a nearby communist totalitarian state.
But we have laws institutionalizing emigration out of Cuba. If you can touch land in Florida, you're in.
I guess, having been to East Germany shortly after the wall came down, and living with some people in southern Germany for a summer, there was resignation to having to re-integrate their cousins in East Germany, but there was no so much indignation.
What I sense in South Korea is altogether different. Indignation is what I hear. Maybe we missed an oppty in the last MExican election to find out what an up-close commie neighbor would be like!
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