A joint wedding ceremony of multicultural couples takes place in Seoul on October, 2017. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, May 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The share of remarried spouses among multicultural couples who undergo divorce counselling is higher than that of Korean couples, data released by a provider of free legal consultation services showed Wednesday.
The number of divorce counselling sessions offered to multicultural couples consisting of a foreign wife and Korean husband totaled 708 cases last year, according to the data compiled by the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations (KLACFR).
Of the total, the number of cases requested by Korean husbands stood at 460 cases (65 percent), about 1.9 times higher than those requested by foreign wives (248 cases, 35 percent).
By marriage type, first-married couples accounted for 185 cases or 26.1 percent of the total, while remarried couples accounted for 161 cases or 22.8 percent.
The number of couples consisting of a remarried man and first married woman stood at 68 or 9.6 percent of the total, compared to 36 or 5.1 percent for first married men and remarried women.
By job type, 25.1 percent of the foreign wives (178) were homemakers, while 21.5 percent of the Korean husbands (152) were unemployed.
In particular, the share of those who replied that they had no stable income stood at 83.8 percent for the foreign wives and 61.9 percent for the Korean husbands.
The KLACFR suggested that multicultural families with foreign wives turned out to have more conflict-causing factors, including age gaps and economic difficulty, starting from the time when the marriage was established.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
