Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health

The percentage of sexually experienced young persons in South Korea has increased and the age of first intercourse has lowered significantly. However, these marked changes in the sexual behavior of young people have been taking place when schools in the country still generally lack a realistic sex education program. Given this situation, the aim of this study is to gather student opinions on current school-based sex education in Korea. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted in Seoul, Incheon, and Kyunggi Province to assess the status and needs of high school sexuality education. Survey data was obtained from 1,160 senior high school students. In this study 68.8% of boys and 94.4% of girls had some school-based sex or sexuality education. The mean hours of sex education instruction of boys and girls were 2.29 and 3.39 hours respectively. There are several reasons for not being satisfied with sex education in schools. Lack of information was the first reason in all categories. About seventy-four percent of respondents felt that the sex education taught in schools did not cover the information that they want. The second reason was that there was no trained sex education teacher. Lack of materials, interactive teaching method, and time were the other reasons given. They advocated starting sex education in elementary school and covering all topics by the age-appropriate level. More than half supported that sex education should be made compulsory in schools.