Twelve men and 12 women enter a Buddhist temple – will the monks help them find love?

Kim Ah-kyung, who goes by her Buddhist name Sunhyeji, is one of the first.

Bubi, 28, sits on the balcony of a bungalow in the temple grounds and greets other women.

All went through a highly competitive selection process involving questionnaires and selfie videos to assess how concerned they were about marriage and children. They won over 1,580 people to attend this retreat, which is open to all, regardless of faith.

After leaving the Seoul region for an office job in the southeastern provinces, Sunhyeji struggled to find a suitable partner.

“There’s really no chance of meeting men,” she says. “I just go between work and home. I don’t have a hobby. I tried to find one but they were all one-on-one.” Everyone in her office is older, she added.

Dating in South Korea can be difficult.

People usually meet romantic partners at school, work or Sogeting: Blind dates organized by friends or family. If this fails, small rumors are rare in big cities. Drinking has decreased. Dating apps have never really taken off. In the year In 2015, after years of steady growth, Tinder began promoting itself as a friend-finding app to better appeal to young people.

Kwon Seung-oh, 30, who goes by Enyo, has always been put off by the idea of ​​meeting strangers online.

His friends took him on blind dates about 10 times, but they all turned out to be shallow relationships that led nowhere. And in a large dairy factory outside the city of Dagu, 97% of the workers are men.

So now he found himself at Dongwassa.