Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rainism]

and many tend to remain single. This is especially true of educated Korean women in the Seoul area.

the 30% took me by a big surprise, considering how frantic the behavior of 30+ year old Koreans at my school is if they're not married.

One 40 something guy I learned is getting married after 3 dates. I wished him "good luck". I'm guessing he needs someone to clean and cook around the house. It'd be a lot cheaper and less problematic to hire a maid.

Apparently a decade ago, the figure was around 15%, and that would have been my guess, anywhere from 10 to 15%. Clearly the last decade has brought about significant changes in Korean society.

[Julius]

That is encouraging to see. A sign of an advanced nation. The world has 7 billion people after all- the last thing we need is more.

Hopefully one day the stigma attached to being single will disappear entirely.
Perhaps it is only really jealousy from trapped married folks that keeps it going. I mean societal pressure to get married, that is.

What is pathetic to see is people running around in panic and marrying the nearest warm body once they hit 30. Usually this ocurrs after they have messed around and wasted perfectly good relationships for years. But suddenly they're prepared to marry a complete stranger. Its tragic.


But the west is hardly any better when it comes to societal pressures. Single people (especially men) are assumed to have something wrong with them, be untrustworthy, wierd, etc. they even get turned down for loans, promotions and travel visas because they are unmarried. its prejudice.

The fact of the matter though is that many single people stay unmarried out of choice. They enjoy their independence. Many famous people and great achivers have necessarily been single. Often it seems that people trapped into marriage do not have the chance nor the time to develop fully as individuals. Their lives become merely a sacrifice to raising offspring. Fulfilling as that may be, not everyone is cut out for marriage, neither should they be expected to. The mass wreckage of divorce and broken families is surely proof enough that marriage is not to be entered into lightly and arbitrarily.

[northway]

Do you have a source for this? I'd like to link it elsewhere. Thanks.

[decolyon]

There has been a lot written about this "extended period of youth" that has developed over the last quarter century in the worlds most advanced nations.

In short, if you look back, the age of "adult hood" (by which I mean marriage, having children, working at a career - not just jobs) has gradually gotten older and older since about the turn of the century. It wasn't uncommon for mid and upper teens to start families and careers in the US around the early 1900s. But also, most of those people would have died in their mid 60s.

The fact that we live much longer lives has entitled us to have a longer period of "free" time. Free from the responsibilities of children and a full time career. The fact that society and the economy doesn't need us to reproduce as fast as possible is also a major factor.

30 really is the new 20.

[nick70100]

[Steelrails]

[minos]

I suspect the real reason for the delayed marriage age is the financial obligations.


I know plenty of young couples in their twenties who want to get married but are waiting for them to have the cash for a family sized apartment($25K+ minimum deposit for yechigum) along with the wedding(8k-10k) and car(7k+).


I'm a wedding photographer here and Korean parents DO NOT want deviations from the norm. They want wedding halls and hotels(church weddings are for the poor). Court house, beach, and unique cheapo wedding ceremonies are out of the question.

If a young couple can't get this cash, chances are they break up and the girl finds a richer man who can least she becomes a dreaded "nochunyo".

[Koreadays]

if you don't want kids and have the family life. then really no need to marry

marriage is extremely over rated!

[Oreovictim]

I'm not surprised with the pressure to get married. Most Koreans pretty much live with their parents until they get married. Who wants to be around their parents/have their kids around forever?

[fermentation]

It should be much more accepted to stay single longer (or choose not to marry at all) in this day and age. Marriage is completely unneccesary in our modern world. This pressure to get married is in a way understandable (evolutionarily speaking, our whole purpose of existing is to reproduce) but I think we as a species are past trying to produce as many offspring as possible. They're way too many of us in the first place and as human beings, we shouldn't be judged on how fast we get married and how many kids we have. What are we, cattle?

Our focus should be on how well we can improve our quality of live. If people are more happy single, then more power to them.

[Who's Your Daddy?]

[decolyon]

[rainism]

I get the sense it's the men more so than the women that are desperate to get married, especially around Seoul. I constantly read articles about how there are tons of thirty something, upper thirty something single women in the Seoul area who are single and all of their friends are single too.

a new teacher at my school is getting married. She's super cool, 38 Korean age, looks more like 31 or so and best of all exhibits conversational maturity and smarts that are almost universally missing from most K 20 somethings.
Her English is fairly good and she likes to talk to me during lunch to practice her English. I gently probed her about her upcoming nuptials and she said she's under no pressure to get married, she's the youngest of several sisters and it's her oldest sisters who felt family pressure on this front, but not her. Interestingly enough she's getting married to a very traditional Korean male from the traditional area of Daegu. She's a little worried about this, because she's quite liberated. When I gently suggested this could become a major problem and asked why in light of it she's marrying the guy, she said, because I love him.

well, that sounds about as honest an answer as one is going to get. I wish her all the luck.

a couple of years ago, I also encountered a 38 K female teacher who was getting married. Similar situation, looked much younger, far more mature and interesting than her Korean counterparts 10 years younger.

If I were looking for a K gf/ wife, that would have to be the sweet spot to look in, provided one could somehow prevent her from becoming a full blown adjumma, replete with perm, visor and clothes, within a decade.

[Louis VI]

[minos]