South Korean women try to redefine family

As the birthrate plummets and more people opt out of marriage, unconventional civil unions are becoming increasingly relevant, challenging the country’s rigid social norms.

The event was to celebrate and discuss the book written by Hwang Sunwoo and Kim Hana, both 47, about their life together as single women in South Korea. But a man in the audience was there to offer criticism. He told the two women that they were making the country’s birthrate, already the world’s lowest, even worse. Their book, he argued, would encourage other women to follow suit.

“The irony was that the man, of our age, was unmarried himself,” Hwang said. “More people choose not to marry or not to have children, but it’s usually women to blame.”

South Korean society is deeply patriarchal and built around the traditional idea of family. Many government benefits — tax, housing, insurance and other incentives — are tailored for families. In return, families are expected to shoulder much of social welfare, such as caring for sick or elderly relatives.

But with millions of South Koreans shunning the institution of marriage, the family-centred support system is rapidly unravelling. The nation’s quality of support network — measured by whether people have someone to rely on in a time of need — is the lowest among developed nations. South Korea also has the highest suicide rate among those nations.

For Kim and Hwang, who say they are not romantically involved with each other or anyone else, the solution is to redefine the concept of family. Their 2019 book, Two Women Live Together, has become a bestseller, and their subsequent weekly podcast, Two Women Talk Together, attracts hundreds of thousands of listeners — giving voice to South Koreans, especially women, who have challenged the traditional family structure by forming cohabiting unions outside marriage.

By law, a family in South Korea can only include spouses, parents and children, with same-sex marriage not allowed. But with housing and education costs skyrocketing, nearly 42 per cent of all households in the nation now comprise just one person.

Kim and Hwang describe themselves as “a DIY family.” Their way of life is an option for women who want neither singlehood nor a typical South Korean family — in which the husband spends only 54 minutes per day on household work but the wife spends more than three hours, even when both hold full-time jobs.

“We combine the freedom of being single and the benefit of living together,” Kim said.

Historically, a Korean woman’s duty was becoming “a wise mother and good wife.” When Hwang was younger, people asked her marital status “as casually as if they talked about the weather.” Today, middle-aged women are routinely addressed as “eomeonim” or “samonim” — honorifics for a woman with children, or for a wife — regardless of their marital or parental status.

Hwang and Kim’s book recounts how they live together despite their differences. When Hwang moved into the apartment they bought together in 2016, Kim, a minimalist, gasped at Hwang’s “natural disaster-size” heap of clothes and other belongings.

But they found each other complementary. Hwang, a former fashion magazine editor, loved to cook while Kim, a former copywriter, liked cleaning dishes. Both wrote books and kept cats, two for each. They loved to chat — a talent they successfully channelled into their podcast, where they discuss everything from books and movies to how to overcome anxiety and stay fit in middle age. They now make their living as authors and podcasters.

“The main takeaway is that it’s OK to be a woman in her 40s and not married,” Kim said. “It’s not a failed life.”

Kook Dongwan, 44, a visual artist in Seoul, said she enjoyed the podcast because “there is tons of content out there but not much of middle-aged women talking about their lives in a way fellow women can empathise.”

Yumi Choi, 37, said married people are over-represented in mass media while people in alternative unions are marginalised.

“The surprising success of Two Women Talk Together shows that there is a thirst for a platform respecting non-kin or unmarried households.”

In 2022, the National Human Rights Commission recommended legalising civil unions to give unmarried couples, including those of the same sex, most of the tax and other benefits and legal protections of marriage, including medical power of attorney. Last year, a government survey found that a majority of South Koreans believed that if the country supported unmarried couples by introducing civil unions, it would help reverse its declining birthrate.

Hwang and Kim realised how South Korea’s social support system excluded unmarried cohabitants in everyday life when they were shopping for a car: They were denied the discount in insurance premiums available for married couples. They also could not benefit from cellphone service discounts and airline mileage sharing available to married couples.

No matter how long cohabitants have lived together, they cannot take a leave of absence from work to look after a sick partner as a married co-worker can. They also cannot become legal representatives for each other in medical emergencies, as spouses can.

“It’s a great challenge for South Korean democracy whether it can embrace diversity,” said Hwang Doo Young, an author of a book about civil partnerships. Hwang (no relation to Hwang Sunwoo) said the country urgently needed to introduce civil unions, given the rising number of people who die alone with no one caring for them.

But in parliament, the mere idea of women not marrying or not having children has faced a backlash from traditionalists. During her confirmation hearing in 2019, Joh Sung Wook, then 55, who had been nominated to lead the Fair Trade Commission, was chastised by a conservative male lawmaker for being single with no child.

“If you had that, you would have been a perfect nominee,” said the lawmaker, Jeong Kab-yoon, then 69.

Last year, conservative lawmakers and the Justice Ministry opposed two bills on allowing civil unions, warning that they would “effectively legalise same-sex marriages.”

But the traditional family structure is losing appeal.

In a survey commissioned by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2020, nearly 70 per cent of respondents said that people who live together and share costs must be considered a family even if they are not bonded by marriage or blood ties. The ministry also found that unmarried partners were happier — and fairer in dividing household work — than married couples. A 2022 government survey found that nearly 81 per cent of young South Koreans embraced the idea of unmarried cohabitation.

A few businesses, including mobile telephone carrier LG Uplus, have begun offering a special bonus and vacation to workers who decided not to marry in order to match similar benefits for newly-weds.

In 2022, a woman in her 40s made news by adopting her cohabitant, her junior by four years, as her daughter. That was the only way the two women could make themselves a legally protected family.

Hwang and Kim don’t plan to go that far. But it has become inevitable for South Korea to introduce civil unions, they said.

“It will happen by the time we get old,” Hwang said.

The New York Times