INTERNATIONAL MARRIAGES IN THE SOUTH KOREA – CHARACTERISTIC OF THE PHENOMENON

The paper presents characteristic of international marriages in the South Korea based on the Vital Statistics data from Statistics Korea. According to data since the mid-1990s to 2005 international marriages between immigrant women and Korean men had increased from 1.6% to 13.6% of all marriages in the South Korea and cause particular attention as such phenomenon involves many social, economic and anthropological questions. From 2005 the number of international marriages have decreased, but still many men have problems to find a woman to get married because more and more women want to be well-educated and achieve successes in job. That situation led to international marriages where Korean men marry foreign women, especially from China, the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries. Many research results indicate that international marriages is a phenomenon among men who live in rural areas and poor foreign women who want to have better economic situation and decide to find a groom in the South Korea. The paper focus also on factors affecting international marriages and support for multicultural families in the South Korea.