Marital Dissolution of International Marriage Migrants: Evidence from Registration Data in South Korea

Sam Hyun Yoo , Hanyang University

Marriage of immigrants is often regarded as one of important indicators for social integration in a culturally diverse society. However, only few studies focus on the divorce of immigrant marriage probably because of lack of data, and most of them are restricted to the United States and European countries. Using complete enumeration, this paper examines the divorce of international marriage migrants in South Korea, one of the major destinations of marriage migrants in Asia but has received less attention in the literature. Based on the registration of marriage and divorce between 2010 and 2016, I analyze the risk of divorce and change over time in seven years among all couples married in 2010. I compare the risk of divorce among internationally married couples and compare to that among Korean couples. Preliminary results suggest that internationally married couples have a higher risk of divorce than native-born Korean couples when couples’ characteristics, such as age at marriage and education are considered. However, the relative risk of divorce among internationally couples varies widely with the country of origin. Exogamous marriage between Korean women and American men is more stable than marriage between Koreans. Marriage between Korean men and immigrant women from Vietnam and Cambodia also shows a lower risk of divorce than Korean couples suggesting the importance of the cultural and ideational factors linked to family systems in explaining the difference in marital dissolution. Full paper will include more analytic models testing the association of individual characteristics within couples.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy