Korea's forced marriage

By Jason Lim

Forced marriage usually refers to the tradition whereby a young man and woman are arranged to be married to each other without regard for their personal preferences because of advantageous family ties. They don't even have to know each other. Most likely, they wouldn't meet until they were sitting across from one another during the marriage ceremony. In fact, until Korea's modern age post-1945, this was the mainstream means to marriage, especially for the upper class.

Well, Korean courts recently handed down a ruling that gives forced marriage a new definition. Hong Sang-soo, a well-known movie director, has been in a years-long, very public extramarital affair with a famous actress, Kim Min-hee. They met on the set of some movie they worked on, and the rest is history. A director having an affair with the lead actress isn't exactly shocking. What's surprising is that they have gone on to make several more movies together and are apparently together and still very much in love.

So, this state of affairs would naturally lead Hong to want to officially end his marriage and, presumably, tie the knot with Kim. Not so fast. His wife refused to agree to a divorce. Hong tried to sue for the divorce, but the courts refused to grant him one, dismissing his suit. In other words, the court is forcing him to stay in a marriage that's been nothing but one for the last several years.

An interesting detail in this whole debate is that the wife apparently took care of Hong's ailing and senile mother for several years before she passed. The public, who's overwhelmingly on the side of Hong's wife, seized upon this fact to berate Hong for being an ingrate as well as a philanderer.

It's not a support issue. By all accounts, Hong is willing to agree to a distribution of assets and pay alimony; they have one child together. It's all about who was at fault for the marriage failing. The spouse who's at fault apparently cannot be granted a divorce if the other spouse doesn't agree. The case law in Korea is that the courts cannot force a divorce on behalf of the at-fault spouse. So, Hong is stuck in a kind of limbo in which he's involved in a marriage-like relationship with another woman but cannot legally get out of the current one. In short, he's being forced to stay in a marriage against his will.

The justification for this case law is fairly simple. It targets unscrupulous husbands who would capriciously kick out wives, who often didn't have independent means for support in a male-centric society in which men held all the rights to property and economic activities. For many, being a wife was almost like an indentured servitude subject to the whims of the husband and his family, subject to forced labor, isolation, and an existence devoid of basic rights and dignity. And God forbid she couldn't bear children, especially sons. She could be kicked out and sent back to her family for having committed de facto fraud against the husband's family. To make things worse, she probably would be treated like a sinner back home.

But like everything else, times change and laws are meant to be applied contextually. In a free, democratic society, being forced to stay in a marriage in name only seems punitive and not constructive to the wellbeing of anyone. In Hong's case, economic support isn't even an issue. Both spouses are financially well situated. While I understand the wife's desire to punish Hong for the betrayal and humiliation, should the courts enable this?

And what about Kim, the other woman? What about her right to marry a man she loves? She's already labeled ― in the most public way possible ― as the woman who broke up a family. Should Kim be forced to wear this scarlet letter forever, subject to the public humiliation and finger pointing? For falling in love with a married man? It's 2019. Affairs and divorces aren't exactly unheard of. Life happens to human beings, and it's usually messy. But the public abuse against Kim is downright scary. Many want her branded for life as the other woman and banished from the industry.

Further, in a weird way, this judgment perpetuates the male-centric culture. Granted, this protects wives who are unfairly treated. However, it also reinforces the assumption that a wife needs a husband to survive. The underlying message is that wives have to hold on to their husbands as the only means for support, and the law is "protecting" them by enforcing the husband's obligations to support them economically. Perhaps a better solution is to empower women so that they have the economic freedom to not have to force men who don't love them to stay in a paper marriage.

While I understand that a marriage is a legal contract as well as an emotional commitment, forcing it to survive only as a legal, punitive mechanism defeats the purpose of a marriage and abridges the fundamental right of an individual to pursue happiness in his or her own way. What's so free about that?

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.