We Married Koreans

We Married Koreans
Author: Gloria Goodwin Hurh
Publisher:
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2009
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781605942155

The New Koreans

The New Koreans
Author: Michael Breen
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250065054

"Just a few decades ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they moved from the fields to Silicon Valley. The nature and values of the Korean people provide the background for a more detailed examination of the complex history of the country, in particular its division and its emergence as an economic superpower. Who are these people? And where does their future lie?"--

Getting Married in Korea

Getting Married in Korea
Author: Laurel Kendall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1996
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9780520916784

This work explores what it means to be modern and what it means to be Korean in a culture where courtship and marriage are often the crucible in which notions of gender and class are cast and recast. Touching on a number of important issues--identity, romantic love, women's work, marriage negotiations, and wedding ceremonies--Laurel Kendall gives us a new appreciation for how Koreans have adapted this pivotal social practice to the astounding changes of the past century. Kendall attended her first Korean wedding in 1970, soon after she arrived in the country with the Peace Corps. Years later, as a seasoned anthropologist, she began interviewing both working-class and middle-class couples, matchmakers, purveyors of dowry goods, and proprietors of wedding halls. She consulted etiquette handbooks and women's magazines and analyzed cartoons, photographs, and weddings themselves. The result is an engaging account of how marriage matches are made, how families proceed through the rites, how they finance ceremonies and elaborate exchanges of ritual goods, and how these practices are integral to the construction of adult identities and notions of ideal women and men. The book is also a reflection on what it means to write "Korea" in a complex and ever changing social milieu.

Elusive Belonging

Elusive Belonging
Author: Minjeong Kim
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824873556

Elusive Belonging examines the post-migration experiences of Filipina marriage immigrants in rural South Korea. Marriage migration—crossing national borders for marriage—has attracted significant public and scholarly attention, especially in new destination countries, which grapple with how to integrate marriage migrants and their children and what that integration means for citizenship boundaries and a once-homogenous national identity. In the early twenty-first century many Filipina marriage immigrants arrived in South Korea under the auspices of the Unification Church, which has long served as an institutional matchmaker. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Elusive Belonging examines Filipinas who married rural South Korean bachelors in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Turning away from the common stereotype of Filipinas as victims of domestic violence at the mercy of husbands and in-laws, Minjeong Kim provides a nuanced understanding of both the conflicts and emotional attachments of their relationships with marital families and communities. Her close-up accounts of the day-to-day operations of the state’s multicultural policies and public programs show intimate relationships between Filipinas, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, and how various emotions of love, care, anxiety, and gratitude affect immigrant women’s fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. By offering the perspectives of varied actors, the book reveals how women’s experiences of tension and marginalization are not generated within the family alone; they also reflect the socioeconomic conditions of rural Korea and the state’s unbalanced approach to “multiculturalism.” Against a backdrop of the South Korean government’s multicultural policies and projects aimed at integrating marriage immigrants, Elusive Belonging attends to the emotional aspects of citizenship rooted in a sense of belonging. It mediates between a critique of the assimilation inherent in Korea’s “multiculturalism” and the contention that the country’s core identity is shifting from ethnic homogeneity to multiethnic diversity. In the process it shows how marriage immigrants are incorporated into the fabric of Korean society even as they construct new identities as Filipinas in South Korea.

Divorce in South Korea

Divorce in South Korea
Author: Yean-Ju Lee
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824882954

It may sound logical that individualistic attitudes boost divorce. This book argues otherwise. Conservative norms of specialized gender roles serve as the root cause of marital dissolution. Those expectations that prescribe what men should do and what women should do help break down marital relationships. Data from South Korea suggest that lingering norms of gendered roles can threaten married persons’ self-identity and hence their marriages during the period of rapid structural changes. The existing literature predicting divorce does not conceptually distinguish between the process of relationship breakdown and the act of ending a marriage, implicitly but heavily focusing on the latter while obscuring the former. In contemporary societies, however, the social and economic cost of divorce is sufficiently low—that is, stigma against divorce is minimal and economic survival after divorce is a nonissue—and leaving a marriage is no longer dictated by one’s being liberal or conservative or any particular characteristics. Thus, the right question to ask is not who leaves a marriage but why a marriage goes sour to begin with. In Korea, a majority of divorces occur through mutual consent of the two spouses without any court procedure, but when one spouse files for divorce, the fault-based divorce litigation rules require the court to lay out the entire chronicle of relevant events occurring up to the legal action, often with the help of court investigators. As such, court rulings provide glimpses into the entire marital dynamics, including verbatim exchanges between the spouses. Lee argues that the typical process of relationship breakdown is related to married persons’ daily practices of verifying their gendered role identity.

Lessons from the Monk I Married

Lessons from the Monk I Married
Author: Katherine Jenkins
Publisher: Seal Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-04-03
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 158005451X

Lessons from the Monk I Married offers up ten of the most powerful lessons about life, love, and spirituality that Katherine Jenkins has gathered during her marriage to former Buddhist monk Seong Yoon Lee. A seeker in the truest sense of the word, Jenkins went to Korea on a whim, hoping to find the answers to her deepest, most pressing questions about how to find peace and her purpose in life. During her first months there, she sought out a remote temple, where she unknowingly crossed paths with an unassuming Buddhist monk. Months later, they met again by chance—and fell in love. Though their courtship was long, mostly secretive, and fraught with logistical and spiritual considerations, Jenkins and Lee were ultimately married in Korea in 2003. Through their relationship, Jenkins discovered the most important lesson of all: No one holds the keys to peace and happiness—you have walk your own path and find your own wisdom through your own experiences. More than the improbable story of a girl from Seattle who found peace of mind (and love) with a Buddhist monk, Lessons from the Monk I Married is an approachable guide to the most elemental spiritual questions of our day.

The Koreans

The Koreans
Author: Michael Breen
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 299
Release: 1999-12-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0312242115

In this absorbing and enlightening account, Breen provides compelling insight into the history and character of one of the most important yet least understood countries in the world.

We Will Not be Strangers

We Will Not be Strangers
Author: Mel Horwitz
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1997
Genre: Briefsammlung
ISBN: 9780252022043

Even though their day-to-day lives offer stark contrast, his spent in a blood-smeared apron and gloves, hers teaching high school Spanish and taking dance classes with Martha Graham, Mel and Dorothy are determined to chronicle these disparate experiences for one another so that, in their words, "we will not be strangers.".

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel
Author: Cho Nam-Joo
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1631496719

A New York Times Editors Choice Selection A global sensation, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 “has become...a touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender” (Sarah Shin, Guardian). One of the most notable novels of the year, hailed by both critics and K-pop stars alike, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, millennial “everywoman” Kim Jiyoung spends her days caring for her infant daughter. But strange symptoms appear: Jiyoung begins to impersonate the voices of other women, dead and alive. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist. Jiyoung narrates her story to this doctor—from her birth to parents who expected a son to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms. But can her psychiatrist cure her, or even discover what truly ails her? “A social treatise as well as a work of art” (Alexandra Alter, New York Times), Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 heralds the arrival of international powerhouse Cho Nam-Joo.

Beyond the Shadow of Camptown

Beyond the Shadow of Camptown
Author: Ji-Yeon Yuh
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2004-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0814796990

Through moving oral histories, Ji-Yeon Yuh tells an important, at times heartbreaking, story of Korean military brides. She takes us beyond the stereotypes and reveals their roles within their families, communities, and Korean immigration to the U.S.