Marriage in Korea
Marriage in Korea mirrors many of the practices and expectations of marriages in other societies. Modern practices are a combination of millennia-old traditions and global influences.
Marriage in pre-modern Korea
The practice of matrilocality in Korea started in the Goguryeo period, continued through the Goryeo period and ended in the early Joseon period. The Korean saying that when a man gets married, he is "entering ", stems from the Goguryeo period.Marriage during the Goryeo period (918–1392)
Marriages during the Goryeo period were made primarily on the basis of political and economic considerations, at least among the aristocracy.King Taejo, the founder of the Goryeo dynasty, had 29 queens with which he built alliances with other aristocratic families. However, he married all but two of his daughters to their half brothers, rather than using them to further build and affirm alliances. A strategy continued by his successors. The practice of marrying royal daughters to half brothers ended under the insistence of the Mongol Empire, and the Mongol and Korean royal families exchanged princesses. The kings of Goryeo married the imperial princesses of the Yuan dynasty, beginning with the marriage of King Chungnyeol to a daughter of Kublai Khan. Cousin marriage was common in the early Goryeo period, and non-royal aristocrats married daughters to half brothers of different mothers also. However, such consanguineous marriages were gradually prohibited by banning such individuals' children from attaining positions in the state bureaucracy and later came to labeled as adulterous but often persisted despite these sanctions.
In contrast with the prevailing custom of patrilocal residence for married couples during the Joseon period and modern era, Koreans of the Goryeo period it was not uncommon for a husband to matrilocally reside with his wife and her parents after marriage. Wedding ceremonies were held at the home of the bride's family and the average age of marriage was late teens with aristocrats marrying earlier than commoners. Weddings included gift exchange and a banquet, which were meant to display the bride's family's wealth. There was no exchange of bride wealth or dowry. Marriages were often arranged by matchmakers. Goryeo society was highly stratified and kinship and status were determined bilaterally, including the status and relatives of both mothers and fathers. Thus, unlike during the Joseon period, brides and husbands remained members of both their natal kin group and their affinal family after marriage. Marriage ideally did not lead to the division of the household into smaller units and families preferred to retain their daughters after marriage, with or without their husbands. The prospect of an inheritance from in-laws may have been a significant motivation for husbands to take up residence with their wives' kin. Inheritance was not determined by primogeniture and both sons and daughters received equal shares of inheritance from their parents.
Although plural marriages were practiced, wives and their offspring were not ranked and each had equal claim as heirs. Marriages could easily be broken by husbands or wives. A woman who remarried too frequently could gain a negative reputation as promiscuous, but Koreans of the Goryeo dynasty were not seen as prudish, at least by Chinese standards of the time. There were no prohibitions against widows remarrying apart from having to observe a period of mourning. The offspring of a widower were retained by their mother and her family.
Marriage during the Joseon period (1392–1910)
Distinctions were introduced at the beginning of the Joseon dynasty, in imitation of feudal imperial China, which distinguished primary and secondary wives, thereby clarifying the line of succession. Essential criteria for a primary wife was that she entered her husband's family as a virgin, and that she could not be descended from low-class ancestry in the case of marriages to noblemen, who, at the introduction of this rule, were forced to choose which of their already multiple wives to designate as primary. In imitation of the Ming criminal code, primary wives could not be divorced for another, and wives' rankings could not be re-ordered. The purpose of the reform ranking wives was to increase the clarity of distinctions of social status across society. From then on elites generally chose their first wives from fellow families, while choosing secondary wives from the lower classes, increasing the distinction between the aristocracy and commoners.During this period patrilocal residence after marriage became the norm through royally dictated changes to laws governing mourning obligations and inheritance rights. This shift was accomplished in part through increasingly strict restrictions on consanguineous marriages, first outlawing marriage to matrilinial first cousins, then extending to second cousins and ultimately expanding to prohibit marriage between individuals of the same surname by 1669. In 1427 another Chinese law was adopted that fixed the marriageable age of first marriage at 15 years of age for men and 14 years for women, although if a parent was chronically ill or elderly the marriage age limit could be lowered to 12. The rationale for preventing early marriage was the belief that children married too young would not be sufficiently socialized to understand the duties of spouses and also thus incapable of properly socializing their own children. However, this law was frequently violated. Aristocratic men tended to marry younger than commoners. Concern among legislators over the perceived lack of marriageable women led to the passage of laws that made families subject to punishment for failing to marry her off at an appropriate time.
Marriage during Japanese colonial rule
Recent scholarship has traced how Western‑style Protestant church weddings moved from a missionary rite to a fashionable urban norm in the 1910s‑30s, during Japanese rule. Drawing on Tonga ilbo wedding columns, Presbyterian and Methodist mission archives, as well as studio photographs, historian Hajin Jun documents the first widely reported chapel ceremony: Deacon Pak’s 1917 wedding in rural Hwach’ŏn. Jun also explores the subsequent “new‑style wedding” boom among Seoul professionals. Costs ballooned, prompting cultural nationalists to denounce so-called “Amen‑style” weddings as wasteful, sectarian, and performative. Reformers such as the Enlightenment Fraternity and Ko Yŏng‑hwan therefore proposed inexpensive, secular alternatives, the society‑style civic wedding and the minimalist Korean national wedding, in hopes of creating rites that were modern yet free of denominational markers. Jun situates these debates squarely within Japanese colonial rule: the looser press censorship of the 1920s let Korean newspapers air disputes between Protestant Christians and non-Christians about how to conduct weddings and other ceremonies in unprecedented detail. On the political side, the 1915 Regulations on Religious Propagation and, later, the 1934 Guidelines on Ritual Practice gave the Japanese Government‑General a legal framework to monitor and ultimately standardise rites and ceremonies for all colonial subjects. In effect, cultural change around wedding ceremonies became a venue where Korean intellectuals negotiated modernity under an occupying power that both permitted and policed religious difference.Marriage in North Korea
Following the establishment of communist regime in North Korea in the late 1940s, the regulations on family matters between North and South started to diverge, as the North Korean government quickly introduced a set of new laws and regulations affecting family law. One of the impetus for new laws was a revolutionary rhetoric endorsing gender equality; however, gender equality in North Korea remains a major issue, with most independent observers concluding that North Korea is still far from achieving parity between genders.Engagement is not legally recognized. Marriage is allowed at age 18 and 17. Unlike in South Korea, there are no legal provisions regulating or banning marriage between persons in cases of consanguinity or other types of familial relations. Divorce is allowed, subject to administrative approval.
As of the late 2010s, marriage rates in North Korea have been reported as very high, and divorce rates as very low.
Arranged marriage is still popular in North Korea.