Love and Technology: Sarang-he-WHAT?

Public displays of affection nauseate me - when you're groping and kissing and making your friends feel awkward. But what about a public declaration of your love, via powerpoint presentation?

Two guys in the office were working together on a surprise for a man, who we'll call JiHyun, who was about to ask the girl he was seeing, to "be his girlfriend."

For me, this immediately resonated with the tradition present in conservative pockets of Latin America where you need to "declarar a la mujer" or "pedir permiso a los papas" before you have "una relacion formal." But mariachi serenades and flowery speeches have gone high tech in Korea.

JiHyun was preparing a song, a ring, a huge stuffed animal, and a powerpoint presentation - all to be presented in public, at a restaurant. The song had lyrics that were a bit intense for his purposes - he wasn't proposing marriage, after all - which caused for a few modifications. When the song said "I love you" he added a quick voice-over of himself saying "I like you a lot". Similarly, "I want to marry you" became "I want to be with you".

But what really blew me away was the idea of a powerpoint presentation, as images of university lectures, bullet points, and red laser dots highlighting the three sub-points on "why want to be with you" flooded my brain.

JiHyun was not alone. Another co-worker's fiance proposed to her via powerpoint presentation. This was too much for me to take - was this actually a trend? So I went to a source, a bilingual, well-traveled co-worker who knows North America and serves as a linguistic and cultural translator more often than she should have to. She confirmed that it really is "quite common" ... however rather than the bullet points that I had pictured, a montage of images with floating text across the screen tends to be preferred.

This led me to an investigation of the Korean dating world, a world that I assumed I would have great difficulty getting access to because the majority of the foreign-Korean couples you see involve a Korean woman with a foreign (white) man, so I was pretty sure direct field research was out. But through various sources, I have managed to glean some information.

1. Making things official is important: this declaration can involve oversized stuffed animals, the presentation of matching his and hers "couple rings" (same sex relationships are pretty in the closet in Daegu, so will not be considered in this list due to a lack of reliable sources for information), and powerpoint presentations. But the words must be said - the man will officially invite the woman to be his formal girlfriend.

2. Couples hug. Friends don't: I have scared a few of my Korean friends, especially guys, when I went in for a hug. After a joyous night of hanging out, isn't a hug in order? Not when you're only used to waving in a rapid motion in a vertical hand position accompanied by "bye!" In most cases, the other person allows the hug to happen, but they are careful to tilt their torso very far away from my body, and give a light fluffy, flaccid-armed pat on my shoulders.

[Similarly, when I have been introduced to Koreans, often the bow starts at their waist simultaneously as my arm extends, and then we both realize we are doing different things. At this point there is a moment where we both continue our handshake and bow, respectively, but alas the handshake usually wins. ]

3. Women are expected to act inexperienced sexually. A source of mine says that she and her friends agree that one must play "the innocent" for the first two months. Pretend you don't know what you're doing. However at the two month point, you can safely bust out your moves without looking "overly experienced".