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Notes -
From that NPR link on 4b:
Koreans didn't have a word for sex until the West brought them one?!
I think it just doesn't sound right otherwise. To match with the other terms, they need something that is short and not ambiguous. The standard term for the act of sex (sexual relations) is three syllables. They could shorten it to two, but then it would just mean "relationship".
There are also taboos about talking about sex, where even the common euphemisms and clinical terms are not uttered much in public. I guess using the English loanword is the most socially acceptable way to specify "act of sex" in print.
Also radfems seem to get their craziest ideas from their academic connections to the anglosphere, so they use loanwords more than the general public.
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Don't know how it happened in Korea, but a lot European countries ended up borrowing it too. The native word for sex often feels (extremely) vulgar, and the non-vulgar alternatives are either vague euphemisms, clinical multi-word phrases or compound words in languages like German. "Sex" by comparison is pretty handy - short and neutral.
Also seems to be a thing in Japan, if some media is to be taken as representative.
Interestingly (to me) another euphemism for sex is etchi or エッチ which is itself the pronunciation of the letter H, which in turn is a representation of the romanization of the word 変態 (hentai or perversion).
The term's arduous journey softens the tone from the original hentai meaning--エッチ really just is a noun for sexual intercourse --but it's one of those weird words in Japanese.
There is a term 性行為 or sēkoi which means sex, but it's a clinical term (think "intercourse"). Sēi means sex or gender, koi means "deed" or "behavior."
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