You know when you go to the movie theater (alone) or dine out (…alone..) or walk along the streets of any city (……forever alone...), and you feel like the world has abandoned you cold and left you on the streets to die a bachelor/bachelorette? Couples, everywhere. Everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with doing these things by yourself or with friends. It's just that you come across those special moments you want to share with someone other than your friends or family.  

We're all looking for the same thing – love. Too cheesy? Then if not love, maybe a fling. Whatever it is, we're constantly searching for a partner. But the way we find it can be infinitely different. Perhaps you're one of the luckier ones and fate has lobbied hard on your behalf to bring you to your significant other when you least expected it to happen. Then there are those who have to go out of their way to make things happen.

In Korea, lonely singletons have a quirky dating culture. As is the case anywhere else in the world, meeting new people outside of school or work can be difficult. Particularly if you're a college student, obligations like studying and employment start to take over and dating becomes a luxury you can't really afford.

But fret not, for Korea's dating culture has responded with an ingenious solution: "Meetings."   

No, these aren't meetings in any conventional sense of the word. They explicitly refer to group blind dates. Confused yet? Let me explain:

Meetings are an integral part of Korea's campus culture. In a meeting, a mediator introduces his or her group of friends to another group of friends of the opposite gender.  Many lovers of K-Dramas probably saw this a couple of times.  For example, a flashback scene in 'Gentleman's Dignity,' with the four men sitting opposite three unattractive ladies until lo and behold, one beauty comes in late, grabbing all of the attention.  Another one is 'Reply 1994' in which Trash brings his, er, less then charming friends and Na Young brings her own friends, who happen to be from Nine Muses.

The male and female groups will introduce themselves briefly over dinner and head to a bar after the meal. The real fun begins at the bar where, after a few drinks and a few rounds of drinking games, the mood lifts and people start to get more comfortable around each other.  There are also meetings where the men and women pair off together based on various methods.

Sometimes they place their drivers' license upside down on the table and pick at random.  Other times, the girls leave one item of theirs on the table and the guys pick one item to get paired off with the owner of that item.

Of course, there are instances where people receive what are called "Afters," or follow-up calls from a person who's interested. But for the most part, people take meetings to be very casual get-togethers.

More specifically, let's get into Gwa-tings, or department meetings. Across Korean universities, there are specific departments, like engineering or performance arts (much like how there are different majors in American universities). 

Gwa-tings have taken their place in campus culture as it's one of the most surefire ways for incoming freshmen to adjust to new faces. Of course, these gwa-tings aren't exclusive to freshmen alone, but it's rare to see upperclassmen participate.

The first category of gwa-tings is the conventional dinner among male and female students of the same department. These group meetings can be as small as a 6-person dinner or as large as a 20-person dinner. Though these meetings hardly produce couples, they're a good way for people to warm up to unfamiliar faces within their departments.

The second category of gwa-tings is the MT (membership training). MTs are outings hosted by department upperclassmen for underclassmen within the same department. However, for departments that have an unusually skewed male:female ratio, department heads will coordinate accordingly to even out the numbers. For instance, 90% of students tend to be male in engineering departments. And so, engineering students usually team up with women's university students to go on their MTs together. In Korea, they call this Joint MTs. 

Both Gwa-tings and MTs were also seen in 'Reply 1994.'

Pairing off after a gwa-ting with the ladies from not dance but commerce majors.  In this case, they paired off by having both men and women draw names of famous couples.

Here's a video that gets into the specifics on how to meet Korean singles: (Disclaimer: video is a how-to, and in no way guarantees success or failure) 

What do you guys think? Does the group blind date idea come as a culture shock?