There is an ancient rule in Korean culture that states that women must obey their father before marriage, their husband after, and their son if they are widowed. Called the ‘Rule of 3 Obedience’, it has parallels in India and other Asian cultures. Strangely, even after 70 years of breathless development in South Korea, it is considered virtuous.
The country is an industrial powerhouse, a leader in everything from chips to ships, but married women in its culture are expected to avoid in-laws, move around the house unaided, produce heirs and perform all caregiving duties. They too have to resign themselves to much lower pay than men. South Korea has the highest gender wage gap among OECD countries – women earn about two-thirds as much as men. Its eastern neighbor and the world’s third-largest economy, Japan, is second, where women earn three-quarters of what men do.
Somehow, education, technology, prosperity and Western exposure have not broken the patriarchy’s grip on Asia’s most advanced countries. This is the main reason why South Korean and Japanese women don’t want to get married. But some, it seems, are using marriage with foreigners to break free.
Why are women willing to break the gender barrier?
The Japanese are known to be insular and ‘kokusai kekkon’ – marriage to a foreigner – is uncommon. In the 1970s, this class accounted for only 0.5% of marriages; Their share peaked at 6% in 2006. Interestingly, Anna Jessem of the European Commission points out in a paper that while Japanese men want foreign brides from neighboring countries – China, the Philippines – Japanese women prefer American and British husbands.
In 2016, Jasem says, 26% of foreign grooms in Japan were Korean, but they don’t really count as foreigners because most of them are “zainichi Koreans born and raised in Japan…indistinguishable from Japanese.” So American men, who accounted for 17% of foreign brides, were in the top spot. Japanese men in kokusai kekkon marriages, however, showed the strongest preference for Chinese (37%) and Filipina (23%) grooms. Only 2% of them are married to an American woman. What explains this contradiction? Jasem says that “low-status” Japanese men who cannot find Japanese girls seek “ideal, traditional brides” abroad, but women who marry foreigners are mostly “office workers” who “seek romantic love and their patriarchy.” Ling hopes to escape expectations.” own culture.”
Korean government data show a similar trend. In 2023, Korean women in Korea married 1,386 American men (28% of inter-ethnic marriages) and 921 Chinese men (18%). France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – all ‘white’ countries – added up to 830, or about 17%.
Delve deeper and you find that about 60% of Korean-Chinese unions were remarriages, compared to only 11% of Korean-American unions. The data also shows a steady increase in Korean women marrying foreigners, rising from 4,117 in 2021 to 4,659 in 2022 and 5,007 in 2023.
For Korean men, Vietnamese brides (4,923 or 33%) were the top choice, followed by Chinese (2,668) and Thai women (2,017). American brides? Only 558 or less than 4%.
Why white men seem to be better partners
Is it possible that Japanese and South Korean women are voting against the patriarchy with their feet? A 2017 Pew report showed a trend across the Asian community in America, with women opting for interracial marriage more than men. In 2015, he says, 29% of Asian marriages in America were to someone of a different race or ethnicity. More than a third (36%) of newlywed Asian women chose a husband of another race, compared to a fifth (21%) of newlywed Asian men.
Asian women’s decision to marry outside their caste is likely a reaction to the patriarchal pressures they expect within their own communities. A Statista survey of Koreans in March found that 42% of women “don’t feel the need” to get married. In May, the Korea Herald reported that among Korean women who did not want to get married, about 93% were wary about “housework and childbearing”. More recently, a survey by the Korean paper Hankyoreh found that 84% of women believe that having children is a disadvantage. Almost three out of four women said that marriage of convenience hurts them.
So, as researcher Nadia Y Kim found in her 2006 survey, marrying a white man seems a rosier option. The idea may be based on depictions of white masculinity in Hollywood — Kim pointed out that Ghost, Titanic and Russell Crowe’s The Gladiator were some of the biggest hits of all time in South Korea — but it has many people. In addition, the West has made enormous strides towards gender equality. In last year’s Global Gender Gap Index, where South Korea ranked 105th, China 107th, Japan 125th and India 127th, the UK was 15th and the US 43rd.
It is not surprising then that white husbands seem to be the “heroic, gender egalitarian, therefore, ideal partner” for a large group of Asian women, and they choose to break the gender barrier for a “partnership” marriage rather than a “patriarchy-driven” one. family honor and/or financial need.”
