Multicultural divorces continue to increase

By Kim Tong-hyung

Divorces between interracial couples rose to account for more than 12 percent of all marriage breakups in Korea last year, official figures showed Thursday.

Married migrants, the majority of them Asian women, frequently struggle to adjust to the differences in language and way of living, while the low income levels of their husbands appear to be raising the risk of divorce.

The 14,319 split-ups among such couples in 2010 accounted for 12.3 percent of all divorces and represented about a 5 percent growth from 2009, Statistics Korea said.

The jump in the number of divorces has been coupled with a decline in interracial marriages, a trend officials attribute to stronger restrictions imposed on commercial marriage brokers in countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia. The 35,098 interracial marriages accounted for 10.8 percent of all unions last year, compared to 10.9 percent in 2009 and 11.2 percent in 2008.

Thursday’s report was based on a rather loose definition of multicultural. The national statistics office only counted marriages and divorces between Koreans and foreign nationals and couldn’t provide corresponding numbers of families consisting of entirely foreign residents.

Families including or wholly composed of North Korean defectors qualified as Korean instead of multicultural. This reflects the words of South Korea’s Constitution, which vaguely distinguishes between geographical boundaries and ethnic heritage in presenting its concept of national identity.

“The realities of inter-cultural marriages are often challenging, not just here but in other countries as well. In Japan, divorces between interracial couples accounted for 7.6 percent of all divorces last year, while the marriage rate among them was 4.9 percent of the total,” said Suh Woon-joo, director of Statistics Korea’s population and social statistics bureau.

“In making this survey, it was extremely difficult for us to analyze the leading causes of divorce among multicultural marriages and break them down in the form of statistical evidence. But you have to think that economic reasons are in play, considering that the proportion of multicultural marriages are higher in provincial areas where there are more agricultural communities.”

Suh said her agency doesn’t have reliable statistics involving the income disparity between multicultural households and the rest. But a 2009 survey by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which happened to be assisted by Statistics Korea, showed that more than 60 percent of mixed-raced families were living on a monthly income of less than 2 million won and about 20 percent of them on less than 1 million won.

Of the interracial couples who split up last year, nearly 16 percent of them had children, raising concerns about their healthcare and education. The average divorce age of these couples was 46.9 for men and 37.8 for women.

Interracial couples divorced after an average 4.7 years of marriage, with about 60 percent of them failing to make it through the fifth year.

Chinese women accounted for the largest portion of divorcees at 53.6 percent, followed by Koreans at 21.9 percent and Vietnamese at 12.1 percent. Among males, Koreans accounted for 73.6 percent of the divorcees, followed by Japanese at 11.5 percent and Chinese at 10.6 percent.

Gyeonggi Province, Seoul and South Gyeongsang Province had the largest number of interracial marriages last year in that order. However, the proportion of interracial marriages was highest in South Jeolla Province (14.5 percent), followed by North Jeolla Province (11.4 percent) and Jeju (11.2 percent).