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This work explores what it means to be modern and what it means to be Korean in a culture where courtship and marriage are often the crucible in which notions of gender and class are cast and recast. Touching on a number of important issues--identity, romantic love, women's work, marriage negotiations, and wedding ceremonies--Laurel Kendall gives us a new appreciation for how Koreans have adapted this pivotal social practice to the astounding changes of the past century. Kendall attended her first Korean wedding in 1970, soon after she arrived in the country with the Peace Corps. Years later, as a seasoned anthropologist, she began interviewing both working-class and middle-class couples, matchmakers, purveyors of dowry goods, and proprietors of wedding halls. She consulted etiquette handbooks and women's magazines and analyzed cartoons, photographs, and weddings themselves. The result is an engaging account of how marriage matches are made, how families proceed through the rites, how they finance ceremonies and elaborate exchanges of ritual goods, and how these practices are integral to the construction of adult identities and notions of ideal women and men. The book is also a reflection on what it means to write "Korea" in a complex and ever changing social milieu.
It may sound logical that individualistic attitudes boost divorce. This book argues otherwise. Conservative norms of specialized gender roles serve as the root cause of marital dissolution. Those expectations that prescribe what men should do and what women should do help break down marital relationships. Data from South Korea suggest that lingering norms of gendered roles can threaten married persons’ self-identity and hence their marriages during the period of rapid structural changes. The existing literature predicting divorce does not conceptually distinguish between the process of relationship breakdown and the act of ending a marriage, implicitly but heavily focusing on the latter while obscuring the former. In contemporary societies, however, the social and economic cost of divorce is sufficiently low—that is, stigma against divorce is minimal and economic survival after divorce is a nonissue—and leaving a marriage is no longer dictated by one’s being liberal or conservative or any particular characteristics. Thus, the right question to ask is not who leaves a marriage but why a marriage goes sour to begin with. In Korea, a majority of divorces occur through mutual consent of the two spouses without any court procedure, but when one spouse files for divorce, the fault-based divorce litigation rules require the court to lay out the entire chronicle of relevant events occurring up to the legal action, often with the help of court investigators. As such, court rulings provide glimpses into the entire marital dynamics, including verbatim exchanges between the spouses. Lee argues that the typical process of relationship breakdown is related to married persons’ daily practices of verifying their gendered role identity.
Elusive Belonging examines the post-migration experiences of Filipina marriage immigrants in rural South Korea. Marriage migration—crossing national borders for marriage—has attracted significant public and scholarly attention, especially in new destination countries, which grapple with how to integrate marriage migrants and their children and what that integration means for citizenship boundaries and a once-homogenous national identity. In the early twenty-first century many Filipina marriage immigrants arrived in South Korea under the auspices of the Unification Church, which has long served as an institutional matchmaker. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Elusive Belonging examines Filipinas who married rural South Korean bachelors in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Turning away from the common stereotype of Filipinas as victims of domestic violence at the mercy of husbands and in-laws, Minjeong Kim provides a nuanced understanding of both the conflicts and emotional attachments of their relationships with marital families and communities. Her close-up accounts of the day-to-day operations of the state’s multicultural policies and public programs show intimate relationships between Filipinas, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, and how various emotions of love, care, anxiety, and gratitude affect immigrant women’s fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. By offering the perspectives of varied actors, the book reveals how women’s experiences of tension and marginalization are not generated within the family alone; they also reflect the socioeconomic conditions of rural Korea and the state’s unbalanced approach to “multiculturalism.” Against a backdrop of the South Korean government’s multicultural policies and projects aimed at integrating marriage immigrants, Elusive Belonging attends to the emotional aspects of citizenship rooted in a sense of belonging. It mediates between a critique of the assimilation inherent in Korea’s “multiculturalism” and the contention that the country’s core identity is shifting from ethnic homogeneity to multiethnic diversity. In the process it shows how marriage immigrants are incorporated into the fabric of Korean society even as they construct new identities as Filipinas in South Korea.
When we compare Eastern and Western societies, we find similar economic and social forces at work. But the impact of these on family life reflects differences in cultural history and social context. This volume examines family change in Korea, Japan, and the United States, allowing us to contrast the collective emphasis of a Confucian social heritage with the individualism of the West. An impressive group of demographers and family sociologists considers such questions as: How do family patterns vary within countries and across societies? How essential are marriage and parenthood? How do levels of contact between middle-aged adults and their parents who live elsewhere differ in East Asian countries and the U.S.? How does female employment vary based on family factors and do these factors affect employment across societies? Policy makers and demographic and family researchers both in the U.S. and Asia will find this book a vital resource for understanding the dynamics of family life in contrasting modern societies. Contributors: Larry L. Bumpass, Yong-Chan Byun, Minja Kim Choe, Karen Oppenheim Mason, Ronald R. Rindfluss, Noriko O. Tsuya.
Korean families have changed significantly during the last few decades in their composition, structure, attitudes, and function. Delayed and forgone marriage, fertility decline, and rising divorce rates are just a few examples of changes that Korean families have experienced at a rapid pace, more dramatic than in many other contemporary societies. Moreover, the increase of marriages between Korean men and foreign women has further diversified Korean families. Yet traditional norms and attitudes toward gender and family continue to shape Korean men and women’s family behaviors. Korean Families Yesterday and Today portrays diverse aspects of the contemporary Korean families and, by explicitly or implicitly situating contemporary families within a comparative historical perspective, reveal how the past of Korean families evolved into their current shapes. While the study of families can be approached in many different angles, our lens focuses on families with children or young adults who are about to forge family through marriage and other means. This focus reflects that delayed marriage and declined fertility are two sweeping demographic trends in Korea, affecting family formation. Moreover, “intensive” parenting has characterized Korean young parents and therefore, examining change and persistence in parenting provides important clues for family change in Korea. This volume should be of interest not only to readers who are interested in Korea but also to those who want to understand broad family changes in East Asia in comparative perspective.
Lessons from the Monk I Married offers up ten of the most powerful lessons about life, love, and spirituality that Katherine Jenkins has gathered during her marriage to former Buddhist monk Seong Yoon Lee. A seeker in the truest sense of the word, Jenkins went to Korea on a whim, hoping to find the answers to her deepest, most pressing questions about how to find peace and her purpose in life. During her first months there, she sought out a remote temple, where she unknowingly crossed paths with an unassuming Buddhist monk. Months later, they met again by chance—and fell in love. Though their courtship was long, mostly secretive, and fraught with logistical and spiritual considerations, Jenkins and Lee were ultimately married in Korea in 2003. Through their relationship, Jenkins discovered the most important lesson of all: No one holds the keys to peace and happiness—you have walk your own path and find your own wisdom through your own experiences. More than the improbable story of a girl from Seattle who found peace of mind (and love) with a Buddhist monk, Lessons from the Monk I Married is an approachable guide to the most elemental spiritual questions of our day.
Through moving oral histories, Ji-Yeon Yuh tells an important, at times heartbreaking, story of Korean military brides. She takes us beyond the stereotypes and reveals their roles within their families, communities, and Korean immigration to the U.S.
A New York Times Editors Choice Selection A global sensation, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 “has become...a touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender” (Sarah Shin, Guardian). One of the most notable novels of the year, hailed by both critics and K-pop stars alike, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, millennial “everywoman” Kim Jiyoung spends her days caring for her infant daughter. But strange symptoms appear: Jiyoung begins to impersonate the voices of other women, dead and alive. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist. Jiyoung narrates her story to this doctor—from her birth to parents who expected a son to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms. But can her psychiatrist cure her, or even discover what truly ails her? “A social treatise as well as a work of art” (Alexandra Alter, New York Times), Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 heralds the arrival of international powerhouse Cho Nam-Joo.
A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER "There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones." In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. *Includes reading group guide*