Divorce in Korea & America : What Statistics does not tell us
According to the annual statistics research form the United States CDC, 3.6 Americans per 1,000 population got divorced in 2013. In Korea, the figure from the domestic legal organization’s research was 2.7 for the same year. In the global research by the OECD, divorce rates of Korea and the Unites States were ranked at the top of the list : the United States was at the world’s first place while Korea took the world’s ninth and the Asia’s first. From the quantitative viewpoint used in these researches, it seems reasonable to believe that Koreans in general are quite liberal, or at least not conservative, about divorce. In fact, that was how I thought before taking a closer look. As I researched more thoroughly to compare and contrast Korea and the United States on the issue, I couldn’t help noticing the qualitative differences between two cultures. It is clear that both of them are having a lot of breaking-up couples every year. However, there is uncomfortable reality hiding under the numbers, that Korea is not as open for divorce as the United States is. Specifically, what happens to women after they get divorced sets these top-of-the-list countries apart.
One of the major differences between Korea and the Unites States on divorce issues comes from general social attitudes toward divorced women. Since divorce is now a common event in Korea, negative attitudes towards divorce is hardly observed these days. As a matter of fact, Koreans even coined the new word “Dol-Sing”, which means “a single who has returned from marriage”, to avoid using the word “Divorced” because of its negative connotation. In addition, many of the famous actresses are now starring in golden-time TV shows as “Dol-Sings”, which would have been extremely shocking and rare just a decade ago. Regarding these shows, some TV columnists pointed out that they can be a proof of Koreans’ increasing openness toward divorce. The message...