Once a rare break from restrictive rules governing the behaviour of rural young women who were not allowed to sing aloud or go out at night, except during the Chuseok Thanksgiving celebration, the ritual is mostly preserved today by middle-aged women in cities and taught as part of the music curriculum of elementary schools.

UNESCO: Culture

As female employment has risen and divorce become acceptable, there are probably fewer people who feel like that among middle-aged and older women, the groups that have seen the sharpest falls in suicide rates.

ECONOMIST: Suicide

External stressors such as joblessness play a role. (National figures on whether suicides increased in the 2008 recession are not in yet, but suicides generally go up in bad economic times.) The very elderly once had the highest suicide rate, but middle-aged men and women, 45 to 54 (see graph, below), have surged recently and surpassed them.

FORBES: Medicine's Suicide Problem, Part 2

The remaining state-owned enterprises are grey assemblies of middle-aged men and women, with retired former employees still living in company housing on upper floors.

ECONOMIST: A survey of the young

There were four couples in their 20s, three mother-daughter pairs and two other clusters of women, one young, the other middle-aged.

CNN: THE YEN TO TRAVEL

Meningiomas represent about one-third of all primary brain tumors and are most frequently found in middle-aged women, the American Brain Tumor Association's website states.

CNN: Sheryl Crow: Brain tumor is a 'bump in the road'

There, I've said it: Middle-aged men and women and people old enough to be thanked by Willard on the "Today" show still want it all.

CNN: Martha Stewart on Match.com? Don't laugh

After all, as we all know, middle aged men engaging in affairs with 20something women are always telling their bit on the side how their still hot and sexy middle aged wives really do understand them.

FORBES: Monica Lewinsky And The $12 Million Affair