Family, Kinship and Relationships - 신명주 Myeong Ju, Shin

MAIN TOPIC : Family, Kinship and Relationship

Name : Myeong-Ju Shin

Date : June 1st ~ 2nd, 2015

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%EA%B2%B0%ED%98%BC_(6).jpg?uselang=ko

  Actually, I have never seriously thought about the marriage. So I also never thought about my family and kinship. But marriage is very important in my life. Marriage is one of key family-related relations. Thanks to this week lecture, I think about family, kinship and relationship through sociological lenses. Especially, international marriages are an important issue in South Korea. So, we discussed about that.

 

 

Topic 1 : Why Korean males married to foreign females?

 

  In South Korea, international marriges are beciming increasingly common. They accounted for 11% of couples who married in 2007 in South Korea. The majority of them involve South Korean males married to foreign females. How can we explain this?

 First, I think that sex ratio imbalance in South Korea. Korea has a strong tradition of preferring sons to daughters. The gender imbalance has become serious beacause of the prefernece for male offspring. Prefernece for male offspring still precails in Korean society. So Korean males married inevitably to foreign females.

 Second, I think that change in thinking of women also the reason Korean males married to foreign females. As the rights of women rises, marriage think of women also change. Women think that instead of marriage life for herself is more value than that. So, women do not get married or even if the marriage too late. So Korean males had no opponent, marry to foreign females.