Only a decade ago, Sunoo, one of South Korea's largest matchmaking services, had no divorced clients. Few Koreans divorced anyway, and deep social prejudice forced those who did to resign themselves to a life of solitude.
Today, with a surging divorce rate that now ranks among the world's highest, divorced clients account for 15 percent of Sunoo's membership. But as with other agencies that match people looking to marry, Sunoo keeps its divorced members in a largely separate category.
"South Korea is in a transition," said Lee Woong-jin, 38, the agency's chief executive. "It's a reality that divorce is rising and will probably continue to rise. At the same time, we are adhering to traditional values."
Rapidly changing attitudes toward divorce -- as well as such other issues as marriage, childbearing and cohabitation -- show a South Korea in the throes of a social transformation. Still anchored in Confucian values of family and patriarchy, South Korea is fast becoming an open, Westernized society -- with the world's highest concentration of Internet broadband users, a pop culture that has recently been breaking taboos left and right, and living patterns increasingly focusing on individual satisfaction.
Social changes that took decades in the West or Japan, sociologists here like to point out, are occurring here in a matter of years. In the last decade, South Korea's divorce rate swelled 250 percent, in keeping with women's rising social status. But it shot up even more after the economic crisis of 1997, which caused widespread unemployment and shook men's basic standing in the society and family, said Hwang Hee-bong, a deputy director at the Korea National Statistical Office.
"I personally feel a big change compared with five years ago," said Lee Yoon-jung, 33, who initiated divorce proceedings in 1998 after concluding that she and her husband could not resolve their personality conflicts. "People would say, `How could you divorce? You absolutely cannot divorce.' Now, people say, `If you aren't a good match, you don't necessarily have to stay together.'"
"I have a job and money," added Lee, who works for a shipping company. "If there is a good person, I'd like to get remarried. But I don't want to get restricted in a bad situation."
The divorce rate last year was 3 cases for every 1,000 people, government statistics show, up from 2 per 1,000 in 1997.
In 2001, the rate was 2.8, which was above the EU's average of 1.8 and Japan's 2.3, though below the US' rate of 4.
"I think this overall trend will keep on rising," Hwang said.
Meanwhile, the marriage rate - lower than the United States' and higher than Europe's and Japan's - has been declining. People are marrying later and having fewer children. Last year, the birth rate was 1.17 children per woman, even lower than Japan's 1.32.
In addition, more young couples are defying a longtime taboo against living together, though they largely keep the fact hidden from parents and co-workers. Moving in together has become such a phenomenon that a recent television series tackling the issue, A Cat in the Rooftop Room, became a hit.
Divorce, once almost nonexistent, first appeared in significant numbers in the 1970s, as Koreans moved from rural areas into cities, said Kwak Bae-hee, an expert on divorce and the president of the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations, a partly government-financed organization that counsels couples. Apartment-dwelling couples no longer living with their relatives felt less pressure to stay together.
Over the years, divorce laws that discriminated against women were also changed, Kwak said. But the surge in divorce in the 1990s, she said, came as women became better educated and more of them held jobs. Now women are more likely to feel that they are entitled to seek personal happiness, she said. The majority of divorces are initiated by women, and personality conflict is the reason cited most often.
"Men found the political and economic changes difficult to adapt to, but they thought that the family would at least stay the same," Kwak said. "But the fact is that of all the institutions in Korean society, the family may be the one that has undergone the biggest change."
Lee Ji-yong, 38, a civil engineer who earned his master's degree in the US, married about a decade ago. His wife, a flight attendant with Northwest Airlines, chose to keep working after marrying. They have two daughters.
"There was a conflict from the start," Lee said. "After work, I wanted her in the house, with her apron, preparing a hot meal for me. But she wanted her career."
His wife asked for a divorce, Lee said, and after consulting with his parents, he agreed. After their divorce last year, Lee joined Sunoo's remarriage section and became engaged to a divorced woman.
Yoo Hae-ok, 44, said she never expected to remarry after divorcing her husband 10 years ago, especially as a single mother of two boys. But with her children now in college, Yoo, who has been working as a remarriage adviser for a matchmaking service called Piery for the last five years, married a divorced man last year and is happy.
Yet she is aware that society still looks askance at divorced women, often labeling them promiscuous or heavy drinkers.
"I'm very cautious about the way I behave at social gatherings," Yoo said. "If I make a mistake, people will say that's why I was divorced."
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