By Michael Stevens

I'm writing this article not because of any current issue I see in the newspaper, but because I feel that since this phenomenon is ever increasing in Korea. This is because of three separate but equally disturbing reasons: The first being the current economic difficulties, secondly the increasing number of underage adolescents having sex, and lastly an ever increasing foreign community of men coming to this country to live and work.

The first two are purely Korean issues that need to be addressed by Koreans themselves and because of this I will not give an opinion outside the fact that Korea needs to do something and something quickly before these trends become a true social problem that will take decades or longer to correct.

For the readers that may not know what the term ``Deadbeat Dad" means I will first explain. A deadbeat dad is a man either married or not who fathered a child and then for a number of reasons cannot or will not provide financial support for his baby.

The reasoning behind this article is because recently this problem has occurred to two young Korean women that I know. They both believed that their foreign boyfriends were in love with them and would one day get married, as did their parents and the church they were attending.

Yet, after the young ladies became pregnant the men realized that they didn't want to be tied down. One of them just disappeared one night while the other is still working as a teacher in a ``hagwon" and even though he begged the young lady not to have an abortion is now refusing to give her any form of financial support. It is also clear that after the young man finishes his contract that he, too, will be leaving Korea to go back to his home in America. Once he leaves there will be very little this young Korean woman will be able to do to force him to live up to his obligations.

Sadly, cases such as these are not as rare in this country as one would hope and there is a feeling by Korean women that there is nothing they can really do after the man leaves the country. The process of getting legal assistance can seem confusing and leaves them very few options when it comes to surviving in a country that looks unfavorably on single mothers and inter-racial relationships. This problem is rooted in the Confucian aspect of Korean culture which fosters the belief that women should be chasten before marriage and that purity of blood is important.

Luckily my wife's two friends both have good parents that support them as best they can. Yet, this is not the case for many young Korean women who face this situation alone and these women and their children must rely on the Korean society to support them.

The government is a significant player in any effort by society to adjust for changes in circumstance and it is in this role of policy maker and initiator that the government must help shape the society it governs. Korea has taken steps to improve gender equality.

Among those is the creation of the Presidential Commission for Women's Affairs. This organization needs to set up a way in which Korean women can better be able to insure that men who leave this country ― pay financially what any Korean man would have to pay.

To do this the Korean government must first aid Korean women by informing them that the Legal Assistance Organization offers free legal service to woman and that this organization will do everything possible to help them.

The Korean government also must seek the help of the international legal community by establishing ``Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty" not just for criminal cases but also civil cases in order to help locate and assist in garnishing the deadbeat fathers' wage, if they do not voluntarily pay what the court deems fair each month.

The writer is a student of biblical studies. He can be reached at eslcity@gmail.com.