Ways of thinking about foreign brides: in the case of local community of South Korea

Lee, Sunju (Korean Women's Development Institute, Seoul, Korea) [BIO]

Email: leesut@kwdimail.re.kr

 

ABSTRACT:

In South Korea marriage migration has recently been one of important social issues. Since 2000 marriage migration has rapidly risen. The rate of marriages with foreigners was just 3.7 per cent of the total marriages registered in 2000. It increased by 11.9 per cent in 2006, which is three times higher than in 2000. Such a fast increase was caused by the influx of foreign brides from other Asian countries such as China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and so on. Their sudden influx has slowly changed the image of Korean society seen as ‘one people and one nation’. In this situation academia and policy circles are concerned with how to integrate the foreign brides into Korean society and then, to form a multicultural society. Actually the rapid increase of foreign brides has caused research interests in relation to multiculturalism, but the researches tend to rather focus on their social and economic situations in South Korea. In other words, researches on what Koreans think about the foreign brides as well as multiculturalism are rarely done. In this respect, using a qualitative research method the study will investigate how Koreans having them as neighbors perceive the foreign brides.