Question. Is it common for Koreans to marry foreigners?

Do korean elders accept a foreigner to their family? If so, are Europeans high up the acceptance-list?

What about friends/peers? Would they accept it or advise against it?

“(This one is because I wonder how it work in South Korea. I have this mixed couple friends) In the Netherlands.. intercultural marriages are accepted by parents. The character must be nice but they let their daughter/son choose themselves. To some people religion is more important than the ethnicity.”

Included in the question.
  • I want to start off by giving a little more information regarding the question. The person who sent me this question has a dutch friend (a guy) and a Korean friend (a lady) who are in a relationship with each other. A guy is 22 years old. The lady’s 26 years old. Her Korean friends tell her to break up with him because the guy’s white. They tell her that he’s basically playing with her and that she needs to marry a Korean man, instead.

ANSWER:
Usually when it comes to marriages, the culture really bounds Koreans. Korean language is very unique. Only Koreans speak Koreans (and yes other people from other countries speak Korean as well, what I mean is culturally we are a homogenous entity.) Koreans have their own history and they tend to be very traditional. They are very afraid to lose their roots. And the society pushes the strong patriotism and consistently educate it to the Koreans. It is not like English that is spoken all throughout the world. There are Korean entity, culture, and history that make a person Korean. Before I am Ben, I am a Korean person and a part of the Korean history.

As internationally connected as we are today through the internet and the opportunity to live abroad, it is very hard to say it is either common or uncommon to see international marriages because saying either one of these takes just more than the statistics.
Well, examples are, it is not common because it is not to a point where you get to see your neighbors and close fiends get hitched with foreigners.
But that does not mean that it is uncommon either, because on the busy, metropolitan streets, it is common to see many Koreans hitched with foreigners. Especially Korean women and foreign guys.

In the Korean standard the men are considered the roots of the family lineage. Even in the Korean language, you add ‘외’ in front of the Korean family terms “grandfather,” “grandmother,” “mother,” “father,” etc.
Just add 외 (meaning “from the outside”) in front of these words and these words will turn into meaning grandfather on the maternal side, grandmother on the maternal side, and so forth.
It just means that the females in the family have been traditionally considered people from the outside. They were considered gentiles (people from the outside of the originals) to the families.

Korean sayings used to be “when women in the family get married and move out of the family, they can not return home until they become a dead spirit (in other words, you’d never return home until death.)”
Whatever men’s families had to do, the women had to follow.

Besides Asian men (and Korean men in this case) being rather shy and less approaching to the women out in the West and also besides that the Western women do not find Asian men attractive so much, the cultural things also have a lot to do with the ratio in which we find Asian women with foreign guys more than the other.

First, as males are extremely considered important in the family and as hopes and pillars of the families, their moms grow close connection to their sons (one of the reasons you see many Korean mommy boys.) Korean sons are moms’ only hopes. They were treated harshly in the Korean tradition by her parents in law. Her children are her only hope especially her son. Despite the trend has changed, it is still vividly true that even today’s mothers are closely connected to their sons. My mother is an example LOL. And the Western women (or Westernized, but origin-to-Asian women) do not really tolerate this BS from the mothers in law. That’s one of the reasons Korean males are usually down to date foreign girls (indeed it is their dream to date a blonde white girl), but once faced with the judgement day to introduce her to his parents, he is afraid to because women, to us, to Korean men, are considered like a commodity.

A commodity. We’d want to show our parents a good commodity. We will eventually want to show a traditional, reserved, and the most importantly submissive future Korean wife, who speaks Korean and understands Korean culture, to our parents because it will make the parents proud. And Korean parents easily are able to communicate with them (Please kindly note that it is a lot of general culture, as I myself am an exception to this standard to start with.)

And it makes sense, too. For a lot of traditional guys who need to make their parents proud by getting a good/high-paying job and relaying the Korean tradition, the Western girls are like adding sugar and syrup into a very fine kimchi stew cooked in the very traditional ways. (Meaning, they just don’t mix together)

So, it becomes easier for Asian women to marry foreign men than the other way around because Korean parents do not really relay much importance (READ CAREFULLY) they do not relay much importance in TRADITION to their daughters because for them, the daughters are marrying ‘out’ of the families and the sons are bringing the marriage ‘INTO’ the families. So when wives in law make the littlest mistake that rules against the Korean tradition the parents get obsessive over the little stuff where the (foreign) sons in law almost get a free like Disney type of pass as long as they keep their wives happy, not hurting the wives emotionally and physically, who are the well-raised daughters. The parents understand that traditionally it was the Korean daughters fate to live through such harsh treatment and be submissive still.

And that is also why Korean women, on marriages and relationships with Western men, are almost like fish in the ocean because they are just so FREE of judgements, expectations, and chains that would otherwise have chained them down to their very throat.

Disclaimer: this is just a general opinion about the society, so please note that if you find otherwise evidences, keep to yourself or share with me so that I can elaborate more on them 🙂

(To be continued)