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Marriage in South Korea endures despite present-day challenges. Each year, couples tie the knot in ceremonies marked by celebration, the exchange of gifts, and promises uniting two people to create a family. Increasingly though, traditional notions of Korean marriage have changed. And to continue Korea's development as an advanced nation, her people need to accept and work with these changes for the good of women, men, and their families.
You see, marriage is not about just one person anymore. Well into the last century, and for many traditional folks today, Korean marriage benefited a man and his family. Oh yes, the wife and by extension, her family, should gain from the marriage. Undoubtedly, many did and do so.
Korean marriage was a patrilineal institution. A wife became part of a son's family. A wife lived with son's family. Wives endured performing duties for mother-in-laws (myonuri sijipsari). A wife needed to beget a son to continue the husband's family. A wife cared for children as her main self-expression. Family generations lived together. Husbands worked outside the home; a wife's domain was the home. A husband turned money over to his wife for use in household maintenance.
In its neo-Confucian and 20th century forms, the traditional marriage supported the growth of Korea from "hermit kingdom" to developing nation and beyond.
However, advancement in Korea also changed this pattern. Due to industrialization and urbanization, education of women, and the shift away from neo-Confucian thinking, marriage expectations morphed. These currents of change carried effects that continue today.
Industrialization brought many young men and their wives to Seoul, Busan, Daejeon, and other urban centers. Their parents stayed behind; so the currency of the recent Korean movie "Here Comes Uncle Joe." The nuclearization of Korean families in urban areas also left many married women, young and old, isolated within their apartments to an even greater extent than before. Loneliness leads to discontent all the way around.
Education opened doors for these women's daughters. With education, women chose to work, to delay marriage, to divorce men who do not love and support them, and to assert their own choices in new and different ways. Living single gradually emerged as a lifestyle. In the 20th century, many working women had to leave the house. Their husbands' incomes were not sufficient.
Today, women marry at the average age of 30, which is ten years older than in the 1950s. Women have fewer children (OECD birthrate of 1.18 for 2013). More women work into their 30s (57 percent last year). More women divorce their husbands if the marriage fails.
These changes represent a departure from Joseon neo-Confucianism. Harmony in the family, avoidance of scapegoating, and human development today represents different contexts for action, different expectations, and different kinds of marriage bonds than in the past.
Women today don't have to record their children on their husband's family registry. Women today don't have to produce a male child or any child at all. Women today don't have to marry either. They can choose careers, independent activity outside the home, and insist on a marriage partner in household work and childcare. Some women prefer a traditional marriage. But that's their choice. It's no duty.
Sure, middle-class and wealthy housewives remain. In some families, the husband is sole breadwinner. The wife is a homemaker, and she enjoys the benefits of paid tutors for kids, leisure time, and other types of activity. Also, there are many ajumma whose lives entail double and triple burdens of family and work activity; they have little time for leisure or chances for independence. Some couples cling to the traditional pattern.
South Korea has public policy choices to make. Too few people here have too few children. Korean wives need support for their interests and have a right to demand them. Advancement creates the need for mutual freedom and for affirming family choices by equal partners.
About half of my Korean friends' marriages have ended in divorce; the marriages that have endured accept or show flexibility in the face of changes to Korea's marriage culture. I've read that divorces are down over the last several years. Maybe that's because more husbands work around the home, taking care of children, partners with their wives, see their wives work, and accept life without a male heir.
We've got to face facts. Traditional marriage may work well for some Koreans, but it's no longer the pattern for a plurality of South Korea's families at all.
And that shouldn't bother us. Marriage is for two people!
Bernard Rowan is assistant provost, curriculum and assessment, professor of political science and faculty athletics representative at Chicago State University, where he has served for 21 years.
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