Korean Job Discussion Forums

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

Now it seems to me what sandbags a lot of Koreans financially is they get married and have children. This is a pay as you go state. Low tax but you pay for school, health care, you likely have to support retired parents, loan money to cousins for their crazed business ventures, etc.

However, if you were your basic white collar type, working at Samsung, decent benefits mostly geared towards the assumption everyone is married with kids, it seems to me the single urban professional would make out like a bandit here.

Discuss.

jaganath69 · Joined: 17 Jul 2003

Yep, very true, and this is what keeps me here. Even with a non-working dependent spouse, I come out streets ahead. I wish the tax burden back home was a bit less. I know I'm gonna get jumped on for this, but its one thing I really like about this country.

Smee · Joined: 24 Dec 2004 Location: Jeollanam-do

I'm admittedly ignorant about this, but are there many single (Korean) urban professionals out there, say, older than 30? If professional Koreans aren't married, what's the lifespan of their careers? Do Koreans who go through the "Big 4" university pipeline even consider not getting married? I'm not being facetious, but just curious. I know the stats about the increasing divorce rate in Korea, but I've never had a conversation on that topic with a Korean.

Kyrei · Joined: 22 Jan 2003

Even better is the DINK category, by which I mean "double-income-no-kids" as opposed to the average single urban professional who might be considered a dink in his/her own right. Now that is the way to go! "Kids, shmids!" I say. There are more than 6,000,000,000 people on this stinky planet and that number is only going to increase, so I do not feel the need to contribute to the genetic pool. Luckily for me, my wife has even stronger feelings on the matter so we make out, not like bandits, but like a gang of thieves... whoo whoo. Now that is the life. Plan ahead well enough and who needs kids to take care of you when you are old.

And that of course, is the main reason we stay here, apart from some of Mom-in-law's cooking.