Tag: marriage

According to the article as Koreans travel more and more people travel to Korea it is causing more opportunities for international couples to meet:

More than 10 percent of marriages in Korea last year were between Koreans and foreign nationals, rising to the highest level in 13 years, according to Statistics Korea, Tuesday.

In its annual report on marriage and divorce, the statistics agency said the number of international marriages totaled 19,700 in 2023, up 18.3 percent from a year earlier.

International marriages accounted for 10.2 percent of 193,700 marriages reported nationwide in 2023 — the highest ratio since 2010 when the figure stood at 10.5 percent.

“The 2023 ratio of international couples among all newlyweds is noteworthy,” a Statistics Korea official said, noting that the ratio had been above 10 percent mostly in the 2000s but remained in the single digit level from 2011 to 2022.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This is pretty troubling that so many fewer Koreans are deciding to get married:

The number of marriages in South Korea plummeted 40 percent over the past 10 years, leading to a decrease in the country’s birthrate, government data showed Sunday. 

A total of 193,673 marriages were reported last year, sharply down from 322,807 cases in 2013, according to data compiled by Statistics Korea.

The 2023 tally was slightly higher than the 191,690 marriages reported in 2022, but the yearly tally decreased for 11 consecutive years from 2012 to 2022.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is basically a scam which I am not sure how the Korean government stops people from being stupid and wasting away money like this?:

Choi Eun-suck was lonely. The 39-year-old administrator at a high school in Seoul wanted to get married but women weren’t impressed by his job. In early 2014, Choi turned to a matchmaking agency that specialized in international marriages. It showed him a computer profile of an eligible girl. She seemed both sweet and sophisticated.

Within weeks, Choi was at Incheon International Airport holding his passport and a round-trip ticket to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. His father warned him not to be hasty.

He should have listened. Choi met the woman whose profile he liked. She was 13 years younger than him. A few days later, he showed for a ceremony that was supposed to seal their betrothal.

It turned out to be his wedding. Before he knew it, Choi was a married man.

Choi returned home in late April 2014 to start the legal procedure to bring his wife to Korea. In June, she called to say she had been raped by a taxi driver and was pregnant. She didn’t know who the father was: Choi or the rapist.

In March 2015, Choi’s wife changed her story. She knew who the father of the baby was – and it wasn’t Choi. She had never been raped. She wanted a divorce.

Choi tried to have the marriage annulled but failed. He is now legally divorced, which puts him in a bad place in terms of getting remarried in Korea, where divorce is still stigmatized.

“People tell me to marry a Korean woman next time,” says Choi, “but no Korean family will approve of me. They’ll assume that my ex-wife divorced me because I physically abused her.”

And he feels cheated. The Kyrgyzstani woman was never sincere and Choi paid his matchmakers 23 million won ($20,079), which doesn’t include the money he sent his wife every month for a year. He believes he’s owed the matchmaking fee back. He is awaiting a final appeal in the case.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but someone has actually started a International Marriage Victims’ Center to counsel and provide support to people burned by international marriages in Korea.

This study would have been more interesting if the follow up question was if they were having sex with someone else:

In a poll of 1,090 male and female adults nationwide, 784 married and 306 unmarried, 38.2 percent of respondents said they have sex once a month or less. An adult that has sex that infrequently is considered “sexless.”

For married respondents, the sexless percentage was slightly lower at 35.1 percent. Married people who have sex twice or three times a month comprised 30.4 percent of the respondents, followed by 19.2 percent who have sex once a week.

For married people in their 50s, 43.9 percent said they have no sexual relationship with their partners.

And yet nearly all respondents – 93.9 percent – said intimate physical interaction was a vital aspect of their lives and relationships with others.

Mr. Yoon, a 39-year-old office worker, is also in the sexless category, which he finds kind of natural.

“Since my wife gave birth a year ago, I haven’t had sex,” said Yoon, who lives in Seoul and has been married for three and a half years. “I would say the biggest reason is her pregnancy as she needed time to recover from giving birth.”

Yoon said such a way of life is common among his friends, especially after five years of marriage, and some even within two years, he said.

“My mother-in-law lives with us to take care of the baby, and that also hampers our ability to have sexual contact,” Yoon said.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This is just another example of why South Korea has such a low birthrate, couples are getting married much later in life:

The average age of the first marriage for South Korean men and women rose by over two years over the past decade.

Local matchmaking firm Duo on Tuesday released a report on 15-hundred couples who tied the knot between June 2014 and May this year through its services.

According to the report, the average age for the first marriage for men and women came to 35-point-eight years and 32-point-seven years, both rising two-point-four years from ten years ago.

Twenty-three percent of the men earned 40 to 50 million won a year on average, while 36 percent of the women earned 30 to 40 million won a year on average.  [KBS World Radio]

I was actually a little surprised at how high the marriage age number was.  However, when one considers the wedding expenses and the costs to buy a home in South Korea couples are going to need more time to save money to afford to get married.

A protester holds up a banner with a message calling for legalizing same sex marriage during a rally organized by the Green Party Korea to reveal the party’s pledges ahead of the April general elections in Seoul on March 4, 2016. The party currently has no seats in parliament. (Yonhap)

Basically these international marriage brokers are using socially awkward people from the lower economic class in Korea to make money by setting up marriages that have no chance of succeeding.  Additionally many of these women appear to be using many of the same tricks that juicy girls in the ville use to fleece money out of soldiers:

Ahn argued that the government fails to protect its own citizens from illegal brokers, who he claimed deliberately approached those who are socially marginalized.

“The government should illegalize all private international marriage agencies,” he said.

South Korea in 2010 introduced a new law on international marriage agencies with a strengthened screening process. All brokers are now required to translate their clients’ certified documents of legal marital status, health conditions and criminal records and provide them to their potential spouses.

The number of such couples has dropped since then, from 35,098 in 2010 to 24,387 in 2014 — the lowest since 2003. The proportion of Korean men who were at least 10 years senior to their foreign wives has also dropped. In 2014 they made up 37.5 percent of the total, down from 44.8 percent in 2012.

Still, Korean men who married foreign brides through brokers took up 25 percent of all international marriages as of 2012, according to the latest Gender Equality Ministry data. Notably, 75.7 percent of those who married Cambodian women, and 65.8 percent of Korean husbands who married Vietnamese wives, and 40 percent of those who married women from Uzbekistan met their wives through matchmaking agencies. Over 85 percent of marriage migrants here are women, as of 2014.

Statistics also show that international marriages ended more in divorce here. Korean couples on average stayed together for 14.3 years in 2014, compared to an average of 6.4 years among international couples. Half of the divorced Korean husbands said their foreign wives ran away from home, thereby ending the marriage, according to a 2012 government report.  [Korea Herald]

You can read much more at the link.

It looks like the new regulations put in place by the ROK government to better police international marriage licenses is working as intended:

The number of international marriages of a Korean and foreign spouse is on a steady decrease, along with falling divorce and childbirth rates among multicultural families, the state-run statistics agency said Thursday.

According to a multicultural family report compiled by Statistics Korea, the number of international marriages stood at 24,387 in 2014, the lowest since 2003. It fell 9.5 percent from a year earlier, showing a steady annual decline since 2008.

The steady decline has been attributed to government efforts to sort out unlicensed marriage agencies and insincere marriage deals to prevent marital violence and marriage fraud.

The number of husbands at least 10 years senior to their wives made up 37.5 percent, down from 44.8 percent in 2012 and 41.7 percent in 2013.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

Twelve migrant workers, and migrant workers and Korean couples who work at companies in Gyeonggi Province, kiss during a group wedding ceremony at a community center in Suwon, Monday. [Korea Times]

It looks like the program is working as intended:

The Justice Ministry tightened visa standards in April last year for foreign women who marry Korean men and started requiring them to pass Korean language tests to obtain visas to come here. The aim was to stem the chronic marital strife resulting from communication problems that has led to many of migrant wives seeking refuge in shelters.

But a lack of educational institutions abroad teaching the language is making it tough for women from abroad to join their Korean husbands here.

According to the Korean Embassy in Vietnam, the number of visas granted to Vietnamese brides fell from 5,708 in 2013 to 2,967 in 2014.

Justice Ministry data also show that the overall number of foreign brides who entered Korea fell from 98,965 to 98,364 over the same period.

In January and February, the number fell nine percent on-year to 17,522.

Now some critics say the rules are unfair to bona-fide married women who already have marriage licenses. One man in the southern port city of Busan killed the owner of a matchmaking company after his new wife was unable to enter Korea because she kept failing her language test.

Lee Soo-han at the South Gyeongsang Province chapter of Women Migrants Human Rights Center said, “The aim of the revised regulations is reasonable, but the problem is that the rules are too strict since brides who fail the test have to wait six months to take the next exam.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but could you imagine the claims of racism that would be made if such a language test was required in the US?