Marrying into South Korean Rural Towns

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
South Korea ◽  
General Information ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Rural South ◽  
International Marriage ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Unification Church ◽  
Matching Process ◽  
Marriage Migrants

Chapter 2 provides the background for the empirical study that is the basis of Elusive Belonging. I first describe the context of rural South Korea, where one in three marriages is an international marriage, followed by a description of international marriage trends in Korea. Because most of my subjects were matched by the Unification Church, an international religious organization that promotes intermarriage, I then explain the Unification Church and its matching process. I describe the Korean state’s policies regarding marriage migrants and its “multiculturalism” project. Finally, I provide general information on my informants.

scholarly journals Feminist Critiques of the Multiculturalism and the Case of South Korea: Marriage Migrants, Patriarchy, and Nation-Building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sun A Ku
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Family ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Marriage Migrants ◽  
Female Marriage

<p>Feminist critiques of multiculturalism have largely focused on group rights by looking at multicultural societies that are based on pluralism. However, in some countries of new immigration, such as South Korea, multiculturalism does not necessarily have a pluralist form, but instead pursues assimilation. Thus South Korea provides an opportunity to explore gendered aspects of multiculturalism in a different context from that upon which the existing feminist critiques are largely based.  What are the gendered aspects of South Korean multiculturalism? In this study I address this question by looking at policies designed particularly for female marriage migrants. I argue that the aim of these policies is to make such migrants contribute to South Korea’s multicultural nation-building process through their reproductive, care-giving, and symbolic functions in the idealized Korean family and that patriarchy is reinforced in the implementation of these policies. This reinforcement of patriarchy has resulted in a perpetuation of gender inequality. Looking at the ways in which the South Korean government uses female marriage migrants as instruments in its nation-building process expands the current scope of feminist critiques of multiculturalism.</p>

scholarly journals Feminist Critiques of the Multiculturalism and the Case of South Korea: Marriage Migrants, Patriarchy, and Nation-Building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sun A Ku
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Family ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Marriage Migrants ◽  
Female Marriage

<p>Feminist critiques of multiculturalism have largely focused on group rights by looking at multicultural societies that are based on pluralism. However, in some countries of new immigration, such as South Korea, multiculturalism does not necessarily have a pluralist form, but instead pursues assimilation. Thus South Korea provides an opportunity to explore gendered aspects of multiculturalism in a different context from that upon which the existing feminist critiques are largely based.  What are the gendered aspects of South Korean multiculturalism? In this study I address this question by looking at policies designed particularly for female marriage migrants. I argue that the aim of these policies is to make such migrants contribute to South Korea’s multicultural nation-building process through their reproductive, care-giving, and symbolic functions in the idealized Korean family and that patriarchy is reinforced in the implementation of these policies. This reinforcement of patriarchy has resulted in a perpetuation of gender inequality. Looking at the ways in which the South Korean government uses female marriage migrants as instruments in its nation-building process expands the current scope of feminist critiques of multiculturalism.</p>

Reducing information asymmetry before marriage: Evidence from South Korea

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100
Author(s):  
Haeil Jung ◽  
Yeonwoo Sim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Information Asymmetry ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Business Management ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
International Marriage ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Male Clients ◽  
Foreign Brides ◽  
The Difference

This study examines whether information asymmetry during the matchmaking period affects women’s choice of spouse. The 2010 amendment of the Marriage Brokers Business Management Act requiring international marriage brokers in South Korea to provide more information about their South Korean male clients to prospective foreign brides in brokered marriages provided an opportunity to probe this question. Using the National Survey of Multicultural Families 2015, we employed the difference-in-differences method. Following the 2010 amendment, foreign women in brokered marriages were more likely to marry a more-educated Korean man and were less likely to work in low-skilled jobs after marriage.

Reforming South Korean Higher Education for Female Marriage Migrants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Yeon O. Jo ◽  
Minseung Jung
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
Current Status ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
Marriage Migrants ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Female Marriage

South Korea has experienced a surge of foreign immigration since 1990, and one of the major migrant groups is female marriage migrants. Although the South Korean government has implemented a variety of policies to reform its education system in order to accommodate the growing multicultural population, it has been mainly focused on K–12 education for children of migrants. In addition, the issues of access to and quality of higher education for female marriage migrants in South Korea are seldom discussed in academic and public spheres. Although female marriage migrants have a great degree of motivation to pursue higher education, they face multilayered hurdles before, during, and after receiving their higher education in South Korea. Narratives of female marriage migrants in higher education not only challenge the common stereotype of “global hypergamy” and gender stereotypes related to female marriage migrants but also provide chances to reexamine the current status of higher education in South Korea and the notion of global citizenship. Their stories highlight the changes in self-perception, familial relationships, and social engagement and underscore female marriage migrants’ process of embracing global citizenship. Their narratives articulate how gender, migration, and higher education intersect in their daily lives, how their lives are connected to the globalizing world, and how these reveal two essential components of the sense of global citizenship—dignity and compassion.

Elusive Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Everyday Lives

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.

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