Korean - Marriage and Family



Marriage. Traditional marriages were thoroughly arranged, particularly among the noble class as a form of class endogamy. The ideal form of marriage was and is monogamy. Although arranged marriages are still popular in rural villages, an increasing number of educated and urban Koreans choose their own mates. Many of them use a compromise form between arranged marriage and free choice: parents, kin, and friends recommend several candidates equal in their qualifications and leave the final selection to the persons who are going to be married ( mat'son ). Semiprofessional matchmakers are emerging in the cities; they arrange marriages between children of the newly rich and privileged class, charging high commissions for their services.

The rule of residence used to be patrilocal, but a growing number of young couples practice neolocal residence. Marital bonds have been so strong in the past that divorce was infrequent, even unthinkable. Now the number of divorces among educated, young, urban Koreans is increasing yearly. Divorce no longer carries a stigma, and remarriage does not have many guidelines.

Domestic Unit. In accordance with increasing urbanization and industrialization, the extended family is no longer a domestic unit. The predominant form of household unit, especially in the cities, is the nuclear family, although a transitional form of stem family is also common. The average number of people in households was slightly over 5 in the 1960s and 1970s, but that number had decreased to 4.1 by the mid-1980s.

Inheritance. The rule of inheritance has evolved over a long period of time. Prior to the 1600s, sons and daughters inherited equally, but since the 1800s primogeniture has been the rule, although ultimogeniture occurred in some remote mountain villages. Even after liberation in 1945 and the revision of the civil code in 1977—and despite an effort to upgrade the position of women in inheritance—the current civil code specifies the rule of primogeniture by giving 5 percent more to the eldest son than to other sons and unmarried daughters. A married daughter's share is a quarter of the allotment given to her brothers.

Socialization. In their early years children receive a great deal of affection, indulgence, and nurturing from both parents. Infants and toddlers are seldom separated from their mothers or left unattended. Parents encourage children to be dependent, obedient, and cooperative. They usually introduce prohibitive norms only as the children grow older, and they apply punishments for disobedience rather than wrongdoing. The primary agency for socialization is gradually changing from extended family to nuclear family, thus making parents more influential than grandparents, and prohibitive norms are gradually being replaced by permissive norms. Because of the influence of the Confucian heritage, Koreans have an obsession for education: they value formal education as the single most important factor for individual success and upward mobility. Currently, Korea has six years of compulsory education, and over 93 percent of the population is literate. About 35 percent of the student-age group attended colleges and universities in 1989, one of the world's highest percentages.


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