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Most Korean man-foreign woman couples seeking divorce face financial difficulties

By Jun Ji-hye jjh@koreatimes.co.kr

Most “international” couples comprised of a Korean citizen husband and a foreign national wife who were on the verge of divorce in 2020 suffered from financial difficulties, according to the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations. The center published statistics related to 708 such cases in which it offered divorce-related legal counseling last year.

Among them, 65 percent of the sessions were carried out at the request of the Korean husbands, while the rest were at the request of the wives. With regards to their financial situation, 83.8 percent of the immigrant wives and 61.9 percent of the Korean husbands said they did not have a stable income. Some 25 percent of the wives said that they were homemakers, and 21.5 percent of the Korean husbands said that they were unemployed.

“Couples in multicultural marriages had more factors that could lead to a divorce from the beginning of their marriages, such as financial difficulties and large age gaps,” a center official said. The cases in which both men and women had married for the first time accounted for the largest proportion of the respondents, at 26.1 percent, followed by the cases in which both men and women were in their second marriages, at 22.8 percent.

The cases in which either the man or the woman were in their second marriage stood at 14.7 percent of all respondents.

“Among the Korean citizen husband-immigrant wife couples, 37.5 percent were cases in which at least one spouse was in their second marriage. That figure is much higher than the 19.7 percent of the Korean national-only couples in which at least one spouse was in their second marriage, tallied in divorce counseling cases,” the official said.

National

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2021-05-12T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-12T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://ktimes.pressreader.com/article/281573768576003

The Korea Times Co.