It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

"South Korea is in a transition," said Lee Woong Jin, 38, the agency's chief executive. "It's a reality that divorce is rising and will probably continue to rise. At the same time, we are adhering to traditional values."

Rapidly changing attitudes toward divorce — as well as such other issues as marriage, childbearing and cohabitation — show a South Korea in the throes of a social transformation. Still anchored in Confucian values of family and patriarchy, South Korea is fast becoming an open, Westernized society — with the world's highest concentration of Internet broadband users, a pop culture that has recently been breaking taboos left and right, and living patterns increasingly focusing on individual satisfaction.

Social changes that took decades in the West or Japan, sociologists here like to point out, are occurring here in a matter of years. In the last decade, South Korea's divorce rate swelled 250 percent, in keeping with women's rising social status. But it shot up even more after the economic crisis of 1997, which caused widespread unemployment and shook men's basic standing in the society and family, said Hwang Hee Bong, a deputy director at the Korea National Statistical Office.

// posted by Kirk @ 1:07 PM