What has happened to Korean family?

By Mark Peterson

I had a chance to reflect on what it was that drew me to Korean studies when I was interviewed for an EBS (Educational Broadcasting Service) program about four years ago. The interviewer, Jeong Gwan-yong, asked me how I came to study Korea. I told him there were two factors primarily, at the outset: the Korean emphasis on the family and the striving for excellence in education. But now it appears the "love of family" is out the window in many homes.

A recent Pew Survey has revealed a shocking new picture of the Korean family. Of the 17 wealthy nations surveyed about "values", 15 of the 17 ranked family as their first concern. Korea's was "material wealth." Family was #3. And with reports of falling birthrates, falling marriage rates, rising divorce rates, the question is, what has happened to the Korean family?

Korea is still concerned with education, but unfortunately, that is often at the sacrifice of the family. The best example of the worst of this kind of practice is sending children off to study in boarding schools or sometimes with an ill-defined "auntie" in America or other English-speaking countries. The "migrating goose father" is one aspect of this sacrifice of family for education, meaning that the mother goes with the child to the foreign land. It's worse when the child is sent alone.

In our town, Provo, Utah, a college town, there are plenty of Korean families attracted to the university, but there are some children sent alone. Some stay with a relative, however defined, some stay with people as "boarding house guests" for payment. One student I know of was very popular in the private school he attended, such that he became student body president. But at "home" without parental supervision or love, he got into drugs and ended up failing out of school and being deported in disgrace.

Another case nearby involved a widowed woman who thought she'd take in two Korean high school students as boarders, to make a little money. She came to me after several months and said the children were behaving in worse and worse fashion as time went by, not taking care of their room and leaving a mess all around the house for the old widow to pick up. I suggested to her that there were two factors in operation.

One was that the children looked down on her as a maid, a lower-class servant who could be mistreated because she was of a lower class. The other, was that of the owner of the house as a drill sergeant, who set up a schedule, who demanded obedience, and who would inspect the house and students and impose penalties for deviating from the declared norms.

I suggested she was being the nicey-nicey servile housekeeper, and that if she wanted to change the situation, she should become the drill sergeant. She changed, and they changed. But the point is the children were sent off to America without proper supervision. And this was at the expense of the family.

I can't understand how a parent can send off a child during the critical teenage years. Yes, teenagers can be "monsters," but they are still your family and you haven't quit raising them until, well, until one of you dies. It doesn't end with college graduation. It doesn't end with child-rearing. In fact, that's when the children, now as parents, call home for advice. And that's when parents get their revenge, i.e., when you say, "You did that same thing to me when you were that age!" But it's all done in love. Love is the answer, and you can't love them if they are not at home.

There are two more issues: young adults not marrying, and married couples having too few children. When I was first in Korea in 1965, Korea was "dirt-poor" and young people often said they couldn't get married until they were older because they had no money. Now, it seems some young people don't get married because they have too much money. There are too many ill-perceived advantages of living the single life.

This is of course selfishness and egotism of the worst form ― another value that has flown out the window in Korea. There was a time when there was a perceived social value in getting married and having children. Yes, in the farming days of old, you wanted large families to work on the farm, but throughout time, there is a social responsibility in the forming of a family and having children.

Korea has had one of the most successful population control programs in the world ― not as draconian as the Chinese one-child policy, but still effective. But now Korea's declining population is posing all kinds of other problems, and rather than recognizing it, and "stepping up to the plate" and having children, Koreans are making things worse by not marrying and not having children.

But I have hope. In the late 1990s, Koreans were mistakenly aborting female fetuses because technology became available to determine the gender. The gender balance was tilted, but people realized they couldn't live in a society lopsidedly male. They not only quit aborting female fetuses, they swung over to the position that female children were "better" than males because "a daughter will help take care of you better when you are older."

The age-old preference for sons was out the window. Korea corrected its gender imbalance and avoided the catastrophic consequence of having a society with too few brides for men to marry. Let's hope they can correct this current imbalance as well and restore the family to the central place in Korean society.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.