[Letters] Importance of sex education

As a student who has concerns about AIDS in Korea, I believe giving sex education to students is a good first step to prevent AIDS. Most Koreans tend to think of AIDS as a foreign disease; whenever they hear about people dying from AIDS, they consider it as another person’s story. However, according to the graphs presented by UNAIDS, the number of patients who are living with HIV/AIDS in Korea is increasing every year and most them are in their 30s or 40s. Thus, in my opinion, sex education should not be only limited to students but also adults as well.

In addition, as an Ewha Girls’ High School student, I was upset when my school was mentioned as an example of a school that had a lack of health teachers. It is true that we have only one health teacher for the entire student body. Nevertheless, I strongly believe Ewha students are having plenty of sex education compared to other students in Korea. Since our school is a Christian school, we have a religion class every week. In religion class this year, we learned about how to use contraceptive devices and the teacher even showed us an actual condom in class. Therefore, I think it was a mistake to mention our school as an example because we have no problem having sex education in school due to a lack of health teachers.

Kim Do-young, Ewha Girls’ High School