- Author: So, Hyunsoog
- Title: The ‘Regenerating Domesticity’ Discourse and the Propagation of Monogamous Civil Marriage - Activities of the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations in the 1950s and 1960s
- Language: Korean
- Journal: Critical Studies on Modern Korean History 19, 1: 97-135
- Publication Year: 2015
- Publisher: The Institute for Korean Historical Studies
■ Abstract After the Korean War families were greatly changed, both by the war experience and by post-war social change. At that time it was believed that families were in a state of transition from a traditional state to the modern, and family discord was seen as the“home destroyed”. After the war, legal intervention for families was enacted, including the creation of a new family law and the installation of a new family law court. Through these measures, gender egalitarianism came into conflict with traditional views. Traditions and values of gender equality had been competing with each other both before and after this intervention was legally enacted for the family home, including the installation of a new enhanced family law court. The Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations (KLACFR) was established for women under these circumstances.
KLACFR has grown thanks to a culture of counselling on family issues that was formed in the media, especially radio, during the 1950s. Over the course of only a few years the number of male clients increased to about 30% of their total clientele. KLACFR suggested not only legal solutions for clients but also moral solutions, such as patience, in the absence of the economic empowerment of women and in the face of male-dominated parental rights and difficulties with claiming alimony. Thus, although strongly criticizing heterogeneous families outside the monogamous norm, such as those involving concubinage and adultery, KLACFR did not always suggest divorce as a solution but took the reality of the situation into consideration. Furthermore, it called for family law reform to protect women who had lost their legal rights as a result of de facto marriages and conducted a campaign to register their marriages. Although its movement to reform family law ultimately failed, it only actively advocated the registration of marriage in order to ensure women's legal rights. Furthermore, until the 1970s, it offered free weddings for de facto married couples. Its campaign spread the idea that de facto married couples had fragile and abnormal relationships. KLACFR also called for law reform regarding marriage within the same family lineage (同姓同本婚), which was traditionally not allowed even though it lay within the monogamous norm.
For KLACFR, the project of normalizing monogamous civil marriage to support women’s rights could be achieved by excluding concubinage, normalizing de facto married couples by registering their marriages, and legalizing marriage within the same family lineage (同姓同本婚). For this project, KLACFR had to struggle against a state that intended to reinforce the patriarchal order, as well as against individuals in heterogeneous families that deviated from the norms of monogamous marriage. The transition to monogamous civil marriage as the norm was closely connected with the feminist movement to support women’s rights by endorsing family law or requiring its reform in Korea.
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