Kim Ah-kyung, whose Buddhist name is Sunhyeji, is one of the first to arrive.

The cheerful 28-year-old sits on the porch of a bungalow in the temple complex and greets the other women, who begin to enter the room.

They have all passed an incredibly competitive selection process, including questionnaires and selfie videos to gauge how serious they are about marriage and children. They beat out over 1,580 people to attend this retreat, which was open to all, regardless of faith.

Sunhyeji had difficulty finding a suitable partner after leaving the Seoul region to work in an office in the southeastern provinces.

“There’s really no chance of meeting men,” she says. “I just go between work and home. I don’t have any hobbies. I tried to get one, but they were all individual activities.” In his office, he adds, everyone is much older.

Dating can be difficult in South Korea.

People often meet romantic partners through school, work, or sogaeting: Blind dates arranged by friends or family. Otherwise, small talk in big cities is rare. Alcohol consumption has decreased. Dating apps never took off. In 2015, after years of stagnant growth, Tinder began promoting itself as a friend-finding app to better attract young people.

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

His friends asked him out on blind dates about 10 times, but he found that they were all superficial interactions that never went anywhere. And 97% of her co-workers at a large dairy factory on the outskirts of the city of Daegu are men.

So now he is also in Donghwasa.