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Kim (not his real name) types his ¡°qualifications¡± on a laptop: Graduated from a college in Seoul, earns W30 million (US$1=W937) a year, works for an ordinary company, and is 30 years old this year. All in all he answers some 160 questions from his height and weight to his religion, his parents' job and academic background and even their assets. Within just a few seconds, the laptop produces an ¡°objective spouse index¡± that shows how competitive Kim is in the marriage market. He rates 71.7. Next appear the names of 38 women who are available to people like Kim, complete with their picture. Her resume pops up with a click on the mouth. The most suitable ¡°candidate¡± is a 29-year old woman who graduated from a two-year college and earns W18 million as a public servant.
From matchmakers to computers
With the number of singles unable to find their ¡°soulmate¡± rapidly increasing amid changing industrial and demographic structures, the matchmaking business here has evolved into a sophisticated industry. Gone are the days when a few savvy individuals plied their trade through an extensive network of connections. Where matchmakers did the job in the 1970s and 80s and ¡°couple managers¡± in the late 90s, computers have now taken over the job by analyzing and processing a huge amount of information. Lee Hee-gil is the director of the Korea Marriage Culture Institute, a subsidiary of match-making company Sunwoo. "Computers are far better than couple managers in finding the right partner for available singles,¡± he says. "On average, the rate of both saying they want to see each other in meetings arranged by couple managers stood at 12.8 percent, but the figure rose to 22 percent when computers did the job.¡± There were some 120 couple managers at one stage. Now there are 50.
Computers pick, you choose
Sunwoo developed a computerized matchmaking system dubbed ¡°harmony matching.¡± The company analyzed the qualifications of some 50,000 men and women who used its matchmaking services over the decade between 1995 and 2004 including age, academic background, job, looks, their parents' academic background and financial assets and looked at how that actually affected their marriage. Based on the data, the company developed the objective spouse index, which grades new members by comparing their qualifications to the average produced by the data. The index determines the pool of possible spouses and computers then choose the combinations whose parameters offer the highest statistical likelihood of working out. Users don't know whether their partner was chosen via computer or couple manager. All they need to do is to decide whether to love the partner. The system lays itself wide open to charges of heartlessness by grading people based on such cold data, but the company says the computer ¡°produces only the results of objectified human feelings.¡±
But what if Kim were to give his ¡°qualifications¡¯ a little nip and tuck? When Kim changes his job to intellectual property lawyer and his annual takings to W70 million, the woman magically got a year younger to 28, her academic background improved from a two-year college to a four-year university, her job to office worker for a large corporation and her income to W26 million. The woman¡¯s looks also improved, from ¡°good¡± to ¡°very good¡± on a five-point scale (and yes, the last two are ¡°bad¡± and ¡°very bad¡±). "We hoped to get statistical data that would change stereotypes about matchmaking in developing the system, but we ended up confirming them," Lee admits. "This is the reality we face."
So do any critical factors in matchmaking change when computers do the job instead of people? "The greatest factor is annual income for men and the 'look index,' a combination of height and weight, for women,¡± Lee says. "Widespread perceptions about matchmaking -- money matters for women and looks for men -- were about right.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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