KORE2034 Gender,

Sexuality, and
Family in Korea
2022-23 Sem 1
Week 11 / Nov 14, 2022
Transnational & Multi-Cultural Family

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Announcements
• Open Moodle: announcements on the final project
• Ask questions about your final projects on Moodle, I
will answer them before next week’s class.

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Transnational & Multi-Cultural Family
Some Keywords:
• Transnational marriage / Border-crossing marriage
• Hypergamy : dictionary definition: the action of marrying or forming a
sexual relationship with a person of a superior sociological or
educational background.
• Developing country’s people à marriage migration to “developed” country
• More women moving, why?
• What is the transnational marriage history in Korea?
• Multicultural family 다문화 가정
• Mixed-race people in South Korea (optional reading)
• 혼혈 “Mixed-blood”: referring to Korean + non-Asian (White Caucasian or
African-American….Korean War)
• 다문화 상병 multicultural soldiers in S Korean military. 2
General Introduction from:
Nancy Ablemann and Hyunhee Kim, “A Failed attempt at transnational marriage: maternal
citizenship in a globalizing SK” from Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in
Transnational Asia (Not an assigned reading!)

•Social mobility
•“imagined hypergamy” on the both side: meaning…
•Background knowledge for everyone in Korea: South Korean women and American
GIs à stereotype on social mobility for poor women à (stigma of camptown
history)
•South Korean female marriage migration to abroad: not counted as Korean
diaspora or national issue
•competing conceptions of South Korea’s place in the global community:
•1) homogeneous ethnic vision that imagines a “Korean” transition that is centered in South
Korea. 2) a multi-ethnic vision that calls for diversity in SK as an index of its statue among
nations.
•Patrilineal nationality: 1998 non-Korean husband gained legal rights to naturalize.
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How did South Korea become multi-ethnic
nation via marriage?
• We did not read studies on migrant workers: temporary visas to fill low-
paid 3D work in South Korea, from the 1990s.
• The first wave of “importing” brides for rural bachelors (농촌총각) in the
90s was ethnic Koreans in China à political reasons (1st reading)
• Failed à turn to Southeast Asian women (mostly V, P, T )
• Problems with runaway brides, divorce, domestic violence
• Backlash to SK gov funding trafficking of women (Yest, Government Fund!)
• Brought changes in visa system, no more gov funds for transnational
marriage tours or bonuses.
• Diverse support for “multi-cultural” family (다문화 가정) à critics demand
reforms on one-way assimilation
• Still more to come: what can the society do about mixed-race children?
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Transnational marriage in Korea
• 국제결혼 통계 Statistics from Korean Government
• https://www.index.go.kr/potal/main/EachDtlPageDetail.do?idx_cd=2430

• https://newsis.com/view/?id=NISX20201105_0001223542
• (photo, Unification Church’s mass wedding) à 통일교, yes, it’s related to
Abe murder!
• “이에 반해 2011년부터 6년 연속 전년 대비 감소하던 국제결혼 건수는
2017년부터 늘기 시작해 3년째 증가하고 있다.
전체혼인에서 다문화가 차지한 비중도 2016년 7.7%, 2017년 8.3%,
2018년 9.2%로 늘었고, 올해는 10.3%로 2011년 이후 9년 만에 10%를
넘었다.”

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Transnational & Multi-Cultural Family

From 2020 혼인, 이혼 통계, 통계청 보도자료, 2021.3.17 7

News from year 2020

Note: Korean w -- foreigner m couple, may not reside in Korea.

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Due to COVID, marriage number in year 2020 has decreased.
KM + FW KW + FM

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Vietnam
China
Thailand
Japan
USA
Philippines
Cambodia

USA
China
Vietnam
Canada
U.K.
Japan
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Today’s reading
1) Caren Freeman, “Marrying Up and Marrying Down: the Paradoxes of
Marital Mobility for Chosŏnjok Brides in South Korea” (Cross-Border
Marriages, 2005)
2) Hyun Mee Kim, “Diverging masculinities and the politics of aversion
toward ethnically mixed men in the Korean military” from Gender and class
in contemporary South Korea: intersectionality and transnationality (2019)
• #1: Not the latest studies, but it shows the foundational issues of
transnational marriages and family life in Korea, feminist perspective,
agency of women in the transnational marriage.
• **Mary Lee, “Mixed Race Peoples in the Korean National Imaginary and
Family”
• ** Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea Reflections and Future Directions. Rutgers
University Press. 2022. àcheck this book!

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Caren Freeman, “Marrying Up and Marrying Down: the Paradoxes of
Marital Mobility for Chosŏnjok Brides in South Korea”

• The first wave of “importing” brides for rural bachelors (농촌총각) in the
90s.
• Research in 1998-2000.
• Based on field work and interviews in Korea and China
• Chosŏnjok 조선족(Chaoxianzu): Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjian, ethnic Koreans
in China à more widely known in Korea, as 연변.
• 1992: SK’s diplomatic relationship shifted to PRC from Taiwan
• continuity of “arranged marriage” and “arranged meeting” in international
& migrant marriages: marriage tours, licensed matchmakers (office),
unlicensed traveling marriage brokers
• romance of ethnic brotherhood à same race logic
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• Doreen Massey: “power geometry” à not simply access to mobility that
empowers people, but rather “control over the mobility of others”
empowers people! à those who do the moving are often not “in charge”
of the process and as a result, do not stand to benefit from it the most. (p
81)
• Chosŏnjok women, not in charge of their mobility, BUT make creative use
of the limited opportunities available to them to enhance their social and
economic status.
• à “in marrying across borders, Chosŏnjok brides traverse powerful and
contradictory constructions of gender, nationality/race, and economic
hierarchy that both contrain and promote their mobility in ways that
Massey’s “power geometry” framework might not predict. (p. 82)
• à author challenges binary criticism of Chosŏnjok women being “runaway
brides” who abandon their Korean husbands after obtaining citizenship
(mass media) or feminist criticism on SK gov taking advantage of Chosŏnjok
women for rural problem, relying on productive and reproductive labor (p
84).
• 4 interviewees have different personal stories/experience of transnational
marriage in Korea.
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2) Hyun Mee Kim, “Diverging masculinities and the
politics of aversion toward ethnically mixed men in
the Korean military”
Kim à she/her.

Background:
- Korean military: all men are subject to be serve in the military in South Korea in
their 20s (Even BTS!).
- why? Technically Korea is still in WAR! SK’s enemy? North Korea…!
- population is shrinking, number of eligible male is shrinking à SK military needs
all men, including mixed race men.
- increasing number of transnational marriage since 1990s: when SK gov started
supporting foreign brides marrying rural bachelors à now their children are
military serving age.
- “multicultural family” creates “multicultural soldiers”

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• P 130: only from 2012, as a result of the revision of the Military
Service Act, the military eliminated the regulation that exempts the
conscription of ethnically mixed men, whose with one Korean parent
and the other parent of another ethnicity.
à criticized by the author as “hegemonic masculinity” and idealized
nationhood: only Korean-blood is “real men” in Korea.
à mixed men issue in Korean military shows “issues of combat
capabilities, allegiance, and loyalty.” (p131)
à “multicultural soldiers” issue also emphasizes the intersection of
class, race, and ethnicity, and masculinity in the model of normative
male citizenship within the context of South Korea’s transition toward a
multiethnic society.

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- Conscription vs dodging military service: rich elites’, politician’s sons
dodging combat service…various alternative service (supplementary or
substitute servicemen).
• who gets alternative service or exempted?
• male-lineage, breadwinner, under-educated, prisoner, orphans,
and mixed race (!)

- the current president, most of National Assembly male members and

their sons) à class issue, distrust from younger generation, feeling
discriminated against the society, “waste of time” and a gendered
”handicap” (p135) à gender conflict in 20s-30s generation.

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More things to think through…
- Skin color discrimination
- high school graduates vs university graduates
- why blocking mixed race men from military is a form of racism and
discrimination?
- why the current military now allows mixed men but still put them in a
“special” category?
- what about NK refugees’ children?

- what about ethnic Chinese born and raised in Korea (화교) for Korean
military service?

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Weekly Comments
You can choose one of the below to answer:
1) From today’s readings, what do you think the core problem of
transnational marriage in South Korea? What are the reasons?
2) From the reading #2, as explained by Hyun Mee Kim, what are the
challenges that mixed men in Korea face before and/or after entering
to the Korean military?

And write your question regarding the lecture and reading.

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