On May 8th, I attended the “Symposium on Marriage Culture and the National Consciousness” held jointly by the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration and the Korean Sociological Association. Among the various presentations and discussions, the session that attracted the most heated interest was one featuring a presentation by the CEO of a marriage matchmaking company. The presentation, entitled “‘Sighs of the Generation That Has Given Up On Life’: A Statistical Look at the Current State of Marriage in the Republic of Korea,” had as its contents the changing meaning of marriage, the marriage-unfriendly environment, and the changes in consciousness necessary to make a society that encourages marriage.

 

What does it mean that the CEO of a company that encourages commercial marriage gave a presentation at a symposium held by the Academic Society of Business Administration and the Sociological Association? Was this an academic conference? A place to advertise one’s business? What is the academic value of what the marriage matchmaking company is trying to convey?

 

And who is calling whom “the generation that has given up on life [salm-po-se-dae]” (a term that goes further than sam-po-se-dae – “a generation that has given up on dating, marriage, and childbirth” - to refer to a generation that has given up on a proper life altogether)? I mean, as one of the forces aggravating the phenomenon, do those at a marriage matchmaking company have the right to talk about the “the generation that has given up on life”?

 

This article is an eye-witness account of the “Symposium on Marriage Culture and the National Consciousness,” an event that revealed the way that the so-called “elites and powers-that-be” see marriage.

 

▲ An ad to recruit “Marriage Promotion Campaign, Supporters of Soulmates” led by the Korea Economic Daily, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the marriage matchmaking company Daemyung Withone

The era of pro-marriage campaigns

 

At long last, a “Marriage Promotion Campaign” has begun. But something stinks behind the façade of this campaign that is being waged to conquer the low birthrate and aging of society.

 

Currently, the Korean Economic Daily, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the marriage matchmaking company Daemyung Withone are recruiting “Marriage Promotion Campaign, Supporters of Soulmates.” In the city of Anyang, preparations are being made for an open competitive photography exhibition to promote childbirth. Also, Duo, another marriage matchmaking company, is currently holding a “Da-dung-i Family [family with three or more children] Appreciation and Hall of Fame” event.

 

The “Unmarried Men and Women Status Board” that Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister Hwang Woo-yeo hung in ministry offices in March in order to encourage employees to marry was not an isolated incident but the mere beginning.

 

If this mere campaign could make people marry and have children, they would have done those things already. In the end, this is telling people to have sex and live together “legally,” in the way that industry and the state want. In this time of the whole world concentrating an unprecedented amount of interest and energy into the issue of unmarried women and men having sex and living together, what we need to ask is not why people are not getting married but why these entities say that they must and what kind of marriage they are pushing.

 

Redistribution of wealth? Redistribution of debt!

 

The presenter at the “Symposium on Marriage Culture and the National Consciousness” said that this era’s marriage-negative atmosphere is a problem, and that the marriage problem, along with youth unemployment and the low birthrate, must be solved in order to revitalize the economy. He argued that while marriage among the parent generation [parents of those currently in their 20s and 30s] had the effect of busily redistributing wealth, non-marriage and extremely late marriage have weakened the economy and slowed the distribution of wealth; thus it is through marriage that we must boost consumption and redistribution.

 

Regardless of their income level, people I know and the tens of unmarried women I’ve met through my current project say consistently that it would be difficult to get married because they don’t have enough money. They are considering or actually putting their wedding, their honeymoon, or their wedding presents to the groom’s family on their credit cards.

 

Their children’s generation aside, does the parent generation have wealth to “redistribute”?  Even in the Chosun Ilbo, a conservative news outlet, the article series “Wedding march bringing tears to parents’ eyes” showed with what difficulty parents are marrying off their children.

 

In other words, not only are the parents who have wealth to redistribute a very small minority, in most of today’s cases, marriage forces parents and children into debt. This makes it clear that the targets of the marriage campaign, through which large marriage matchmaking companies are clamoring for more marriage, are high-income professional parents and children.

 

The problem of marriage is a problem of class. But while hiding the fact that marriage reproduces financial inequality intergenerationally and romanticizing it as something that brings happiness to all may temporarily raise the marriage rate, it will also raise the divorce rate by the same percentage.

 

The mismatch in men’s and women’s “proper marriage age”

 

The symposium presenter said that there have been changes in the standards that marriage matchmaking company clients are using to select a spouse; a woman’s age was mentioned as particularly important.

 

The presenter said that women are at a disadvantage because men with financial means consider a woman’s age more important than her other qualities, and that there is a reason that the saying “The sum of the man’s and woman’s ages should be 50” exists. Women between the ages of 35 and 40 who sign up for matchmaking have established themselves in their careers, but men of that age do not want women of that age. So, the presenter urged, women should be encouraged to marry by the time they are in their early 30s, at the latest.

 

Here, a woman’s social position is not an accomplishment, and she has to “match” the age that a man wants. In this era, women of around “proper marriage age” can’t pursue their own goals and can’t let this time pass them by, but they also can’t be completely without financial ability. Really, who is such a marriage for, and why do it?

 

People have started to talk about the appearance of this kind of “problem” since the early 2000s, as phrases like “marriage strike” and “birth strike” and labels like “gold miss” and “silver miss” have appeared and women have become more educated and employed. In order to encourage marriage and childbirth, policies and institutional measures targeting women are pouring out, but the untruthful argument that late marriage and the fall of the birthrate are women’s fault was created in those institutions. 

 

The rise in the average age of first marriage is something that involves both men and women – so why are only women being blamed for it?

 

Not only that, it’s no problem when men delay marriage, because young women supposedly line up of their own accord for a man who has become successful, while it is for women, even though they are doubly shackled by having to both become successful and get married by a certain age for the sake of their “commodity price.”

 

My point is that though the problem of late marriage seems like a gender-neutral one, it is actually portrayed as a completely gendered one. Also, the problem of class is being hidden. In the end, talk about delayed marriage and falling birthrates is nothing but criticism of women who have passed “proper marriage age.”

 

There is already more than enough promotion of marriage and childbirth

 

The presenter continued on to say that improvements in the realms of government, business, and culture were necessary in order to make a society that encourages marriage, and recommended marriage promotion campaigns, marriage advertisements, and even marriage education and married people being given advantages when applying for jobs. The presenter lamented that the Korean Communication Standards Commission does not allow the broadcast of marriage matchmaking company ads, that comprehensive-programming channels air so many singles-friendly programs, and that there are so many melodramatic TV dramas that portray conflict with mothers-in-law.

 

And yet, we are currently being overwhelmed with advertising for marriage and childbirth: [reality TV shows like] Superman is Back, We Got Married, With You, etc. There is so much content emphasizing marriage, remarriage, and childbirth that viewers are on the verge of getting baby fatigue – so how much more do we need? Moreover, these programs hazily romanticize dating, marriage, and childbirth, and add to the feeling of deprivation caused by the large differences between social classes.

 

The presenter also said that because the root cause of late marriage and the low birthrate is the youth unemployment crisis, we should give extra points during the hiring process to married people. However, married people are already receiving enough in the form of tax benefits - so much so that it’s like unmarried people are tacitly paying a singles tax.

 

I also can’t forget how the presenter quoted a businessman who said that married and unmarried employees have different attitudes towards their work. As the government needs taxpayers, so businesses encourage marriage for this reason. Parents with loans to pay back and kids to send to cram school will be desperate, will obediently take orders in the workplace and not resist.

 

Marriage isn’t everyone’s destiny

 

As a historical construction, the “modern family” has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. The ideology of heterosexuality, the nuclear family, and the normal family are a kind of myth, and there is no period in history in which the family was “normal.” The family does not have a fixed, “true” form, but changes ceaselessly.

 

As German sociologist Elizabeth Beck-Gernshein has said, what comes after the “end” of the family is the family. The solution to the problem will start to become visible with the shattering of the existing myths of marriage and the family, and through communication and compromise about a variety of situations and relationships.

 

Kathleen Gerson, professor of sociology at New York University, has called the feminist revolution in the workplace and the family “the unfinished revolution,” pointing out that though young people today have more gender-equal values than in the past, there is a gap between thought and action. She believes, however, that the new generation organizes their life around not a fixed form of the family but the family’s dynamic processes and routes of change, and thus suggests that policymakers adopt flexible attitudes towards family and gender.

 

It’s not that the “young” generation doesn’t want to get married. That said, it’s not merely a matter of not being able to, either. The meaning of marriage in this era is that of trying to achieve something in the midst of unstable conditions, part of a trade in intimacy, and something that is constructed out of survival strategies. Romantic marriage no longer exists. 

 

People who emphasize the importance of marriage argue that “marriage is the future.” But while marriage may be the future of some, it is not everyone’s. Not only that, marriage is the essence of the male-centric values of capital and the state.

 

We need to ask who it is in current marriage-coercive discourse that is claiming that there is a problem, and what their motives are. Last April, the Korean Association of Public Health Doctors and the marriage matchmaking company Duo made an agreement to “Support Healthy Marriage” [under which Duo will provide matchmaking services to unmarried members of the association]. By “healthy” marriage they mean heterosexual, patriarchal, childbirth-centric marriage. Good luck with that.

 

It’s not a question of why people do or don’t marry, but a question of what marriage is. What will become of marriage? A variety of relationships – as processes and strategies with new forms - will take its place

 

-Author Kim Bo-hwa (also known as Pi) is a feminist researcher-activist.

-Translated by Marilyn Hook

-Published June 22, 2015

*Original article: https://ildaro.com/7133

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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