This file photo shows a wedding ceremony held in the country’s southwestern city of Gwangju on July 4, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — Half of all South Koreans believe that they don’t need to get married, with one third noting that the sentiment could largely be attributed to not being able to afford a wedding, the statistics agency said Wednesday.
The survey by Statistics Korea showed 50 percent of respondents wanted to get married, down by 1.2 percentage points from two years ago.
Among the respondents, 43.2 percent said they wouldn’t mind getting married, but it was also okay to stay single, while 3.6 percent said they would not get married.
At 55.8 percent, more than half of the men surveyed said they intended to get married. In contrast, only 44.3 percent of women wanted to get married.
With 36.9 percent of single men and 22.1 percent of single women saying they wanted to get married, there was a wide gap between genders.
Sorted by age, 29.1 percent of those in their teens (13 to 19 years of age) intended to get married, while 71.6 percent of those in their 60s or older said that marriage was crucial.
As for the reasons for not getting married, 28.7 percent attributed the sentiment to not be able to afford a wedding, followed by unstable employment (14.6 percent).
Sorted by gender, men were most likely to cite unstable employment (16.6 percent), while women couldn’t feel the need for marriage (15 percent)’.
The belief that men and women can still live together despite not getting married jumped to 65.2 percent, up by 5.5 percentage points from two years ago, surpassing the 60-percent hurdle for the very first time.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
