Why I am not (and cannot get) married
While the government is desperately campaigning to encourage women to have more children, the average age of marriage for women in Korea hit 30. As an unmarried single 30-year-old myself, I can attest that Korea is not the most attractive place to get married and have kids. High inflation, rock-bottom job security, long work hours that often extend into the middle of night, wage that actually decreased over the last decade, unrealistic housing prices, insane competition at work and school, etc. I am too busy surviving myself. I don’t think I can take care of children and a husband (as it happens in Korea) on top of the stuff I have to deal with now.
Most of my female friends in my age group are single and consider marriage not a mandatory milestone for life. The fun fact is guy friends tend to be more conservative and think the opposite: marriage is a must.
To examine this disparity is to reveal many gender issues and the harsh reality of the roles expected of married women in this country. Women tend to get a disproportionate amount of responsibilities heaped on them. Korea’s job market and wage level are in such a bad shape that most guys, even super-traditional ones, want their spouses to work. But these conservative ones ain’t gonna get near the kitchen or kids, because setting a foot inside the kitchen is equivalent to castration.
So what is life like for a married working woman here? You get off from work “early” around 7 or 8 - your boss will then openly complain that women are by nature irresponsible and only think about getting off work early and probably start thinking of laying you off - rush home (thanks to insane housing prices here, as a young couple you won’t be able to afford a house in Seoul and your commute is going to be at least 1+ hours), pick your sleepy kids up from child care, go back home, and do housework. To be fair, lots of husbands try to “help,” and most Korean guys I met considered house chore mainly women’s domain. (My friend had her husband yell at her, “But it’s different! You are a woman! I am a guy and shouldn’t be really doing the dishes!”) Then wait until your mother-in-law steps in, unexpected, and starts complaining the house is a pig sty and you are not properly serving your husband a 5-dish meal.
Then think about raising kids here. Think about putting them through “exam hell,” networking with other parents to find the latest and jealously guarded info on popular and selective private institutes, overseeing your child’s schedule as he or she shuffles around school, piano lesson, math tutoring session, English class, and swimming class. The pressure to go to top schools is real here. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will be first and foremost judged upon which alma mater you are from; your high school and university GPAs will haunt you until you die. (At job interviews, my interviewers size my resume up and narrow their eyes, thinking, “Educated in the States but not from an Ivy League.”)
Of course, getting married and having kids are hard on men, too. They know they are the primary breadwinner (thanks to Korea’s great gender income disparity, the highest among OECD nations). Their wives may have to quit working one day to raise children. They are stuck in the corporate ladder as a sole breadwinner, working from early morning till midnight, obligated to get drunk with their superiors in “company dinners,” because that’s how you network and get promoted. There are not a lot of decent jobs in the market - once you get one, better cling onto it no matter what happens. The society is astonishingly harsh on failures and there are not a lot of second chances. Then these fathers come home late at night and children treat them like strangers. Still, their socks are going to be washed and shirts are going to be ironed by someone else. What your mom did for you will be now done by your wife. And after all, the society tends to judge unmarried single men more harshly than their female counterparts. Marriage is a task that must be completed.
Well, the fact is that I can’t afford to get married. The government wants me to marry and pop out children, but with the current work hours and commute, I simply don’t have time to meet anyone. Although my pay isn’t bad in the Korean context, I still don’t have enough money to get settled. My married friends tend to be the ones from affluent backgrounds, whose parents could afford to buy them a house in Seoul, which of course made them attractive marriage materials. This says a lot, since I come from a stable middle-class family. I am not sure if I want to have a child and spend thousands of dollars on his or her education alone per year and still worry that even a diploma from a top university would not guarantee him or her happiness in this rigid, mean social structure.
I am seriously and earnestly thinking opting out, moving to the US or Canada, but of course, as a non-white minority woman, the prospect of marriage isn’t going to be the brightest. Yet I am going to be happier as an individual, at the least.