[cc] for deaf and hard of hearing provided by eat your kimchi tl;dr wednesdays martina: long time viewer and very active commenter jennifer holloway sent us an email recently
Android TV qoo10, she wrote us saying.. simon: i'm watching a korean drama called "the greatest marriage" in which a famous a single mom is ostracized
and you learn that fathers tend to get full custody in divorce now i realize that korean dramas are an exaggeration of reality, but how close to reality are these depictions of single mothers in korea? martina: so this is going to be a very challenging tl;dr topic for us for a couple of reasons #1: i think this is going to make a lot of viewers
at home really angry we talk about a lot of the stats that we found and its going to make you feel very frustrated simon: #2: a lot of the statistics that we are going to be telling you in this tl;dr are incomplete, because #1 there aren't a lot of studies about it and #2 there are a whole lot of underreported and
unrepresented cases simply because a lot of korean mothers don't won't to out themselves as single mothers because of the stigma that comes attached to it martina: now i actually didn't realize there was a stigma attached to being divorced or a single mom. until i actually had a friend who was indeed a single mom who was divorced
and she did not let me tell anybody this fact i was really really surprised that she was so adamant about you cannot tell anybody you can't let anybody know this is a really big deal this could get rid of my job simon: she was really scared when she was telling her this
martina: i was really surprised about this because in north america if you are single or divorced its kind of normal to be like oh are you married? like oh nah i'm divorced, two kids like i mean you know simon: its hopefully discussed in north america while in korea its pretty taboo martina: so i was really surprised of how
hush hush she wanted this to be and i didn't really actually think about a lot about it until recently and now that we dig into a lot of the stats about single moms in korea i completely understand why. simon: so here's some things that we didn't know about if you are a single mom you could lose your job
you could lose your friends and you could even be ostracized by your family for it. martina: so on with motherhood is very closely associated with dishonoring your family name which means people are going to want to detach themselves from you because they don't want to dishonor their siblings and the family name that comes with it simon: there's also a lot of stigma and bullying
that will happen to the child of a single mother as well. martina: so in the end a lot of these women are forced to moved out their homes and are not supported by their family in any way whatsoever simon: even the korean term "single mom" has a lot of negative connotations to it when its said out loud and its really interesting that they use an english term for it instead.
martina: yeah, i wonder why there isn't like a korean word for it maybe there is. simon: now before we get too deep into this i wanna least point you in the direction of www.kumfa.or.ko the korean unwed mothers families association here is a very startling stat according to the ministry of health and welfare
in 2007 out of 100 pregnancies of unwed women in korea 96 of those pregnancies will end up in abortion :( 4 out of the 100 women will give birth and out of those 4. 3 will be given up for adoption strangely, though even though abortions are so commonly practiced here in korea they have been illegal since 1995 and as we mentioned before with the stigma being a single mother
thats why so many people are going for the option of abortion instead. martina: i've also heard from people that lets say its like your son that actually gets a girl pregnant maybe at a young age. family is more likely to go to the girl and try to like force her into getting an abortion even though, technically the sons just going to detach himself.
they'd rather her just get an abortion so there isn't actually any ties or problems whatsoever. so lets say you decide to keep your child what kind of support system does the mother have regarding the father taking care of the baby? simon: so by law fathers are required to pay child support but there's something really bizarre about this law both the mother and the father have to file paperwork for this.
so if a father doesn't want to file the paperwork. he doesn't have to obey the law. its an optional, mandatory law which totally blows my mind. martina: yeah. thats like saying ah, you are being arrested to be sent to jail for murder but first fill this paperwork simon: do you agree.
martina: that says to go to prison so, your like. uh... is anyone going to enforce me to sign this paperwork? and you look around and no one is going to enforce you. so you just walk away from the paperwork and you don't go to jail. -_- a lot of people don't do the paperwork simon: so the blame isn't to be soley on the fathers not wanting to sign the paperwork. the mothers are also afraid of the stigma that comes with outing themselves as single mothers.
martina: so outside of the father's support.. what kind of support is there from the government? well there are 33 facilities in korea for unwed and single korean moms. simon; yep, 33 out of the whole country of around 50 million people only 33 facilities martina: 33 and there was a case study done where a single mom called all 33 facilities
and only 2 of them returned her phone call simon: it is very difficult to get any support from these facilities as well. martina: now, here's whats scary a lot of them are actually run by adoption agencies or orphanages which are basically trying to force the woman into giving up their baby so they might say to you oh, can stay here for six or seven months we're going to take care of you
simon: while you're pregnant... stay here... you can pretend that your going on an overseas study or something like that.. martina: since your family is not taking care of you and you get kicked out of the house but, then..... they start to get into your mind about giving your baby up for adoption. simon: they put a lot of pressure on you for that. martina: yeah, they get you to sign paperwork to give up your baby right away.. even if you want to see your baby after you gave birth martina: a lot of them
simon: they make it very challenging martina: exactly so in the end... here comes a really scary statistic. 90% of children that are adopted from korea come from single moms. simon: a lot of this has to come with the pressure of these agencies as well martina: so it doesn't seem that they're are there to really support the mother as like your mother "you can do it." "your a single mom" here's some groups you can talk to
its more like supporting them to give up their child. [music plays] [read on screen] simon: now apart from these homes.. there's not a lot of support from the government either. unwed mothers with children who are under 12 years old and who earn less than 1.2 million won/ month will get 70,000 won from the government but they have to prove that they earn less than 1.2 million/month here's whats really scary about this though
when the government factors in how much you earn or how much your worth they also factor in your possessions like your car, your home, and whats worse.. is that they will also factor in your family's earnings as well. so, if your not getting any support from your family if they have jobs then the government will decline that 70,000 won which is like 70 bucks / month [$70] they might deny that even if your family doesn't support you at all.
martina: but here's whats confusing about it so they said that you have to live under the poverty level in order to get support from the government. but if your family disowns you it still factors in as part of your earnings even though the family has done nothing to help you whatsoever. simon: right. martina: that doesn't make any sense simon: here's another shitty statistic parents in korea who wind up adopting
get 150,000 won support from the government and they do not have to prove any kind of poverty whatsoever. they just flat out will get that they will earn more than double what a single mother earns who tries to keep her own child for the people who wind up adopting instead. martina: so livng under the poverty line single mother $70 / month if i'm lucky
adopts a child could live at any level simon: yep gets a 150 dollars / month so you can see with all these stats and all the situations with the governments lack of support why women may not won't to be a single mom and keep their kid in korea which is quite different from what we've seen in canada and america while no one thinks that a single mom is an easy job
no ones like " oh your a single mom, its easy" simon: yeah martina: there's a lot of support groups like single moms on facebook simon: right martina: or like meetings or like people being like a proud and strong single mom. simon: it is something that you can openly discuss without being afraid of losing your job. martina: i also thing there is a big stigma
at least in canada & usa about "dead beat dads" simon: yes martina: so, theres this idea now that people will be like pissed off and angry they'll accuse people of not taking care of simon: they'll go on [tv host:] maury povich and they'll vouch that way in korea that stigma doesn't exist there isn't even a term for "dead beat dads" here
martina: yeah i found that the difference in canada and america is that... if you don't take care of your kid.. people will look down on the father for that and you have to pay child support. while it seems like in korea.. theres no guilt placed on them. simon: no stigma based on them. there's only stigma placed on the single mother. martina: yeah, its considered that single mother was promiscuous and like what was she doing sleeping around but no one ever says like..
what was this dude doing not keeping his up in his pants simon: so i want to end off this tl;dr on two notes... number 1: i know that there is going to be a lot of korean ultra nationalists who are going to say... this isn't true!! your stats are wrong!! so on and so forth... i want to give you the entire reading list of what we found. we're going to link that in the blog post you can click on the link here. we'll put all of the articles there. so you can do some of the research yourself as well
and if all those links are too much for you to research because you don't want to spend hours on reading all upon it i at least recommend that you look into kumfa its kumfa.or.kr they know a lot more about this then we do at least look into them and try to offer them a little more support as well martina: now on the other side of the coin i don't want the comment section to turn into things from people being like.. "oh this typical of korea"
because unwed, single mothers, and stigmas that come with it happens all of the world ok ,so please don't act like this is only happening in korea some governments are better at it. some governments are worse. i feel like they could all use more support though. simon: what we're hoping to do here is to open up a conversation about what its like to be a single mother in different countries so please let us know what its like in your country in comment section below and hopefully we can earn formic others experiences
martina: also we love to know things like... does the government help out single moms?
what about single dangle dads? is there a stigma that exists.. like for example.. can you shame a "dead beat dad" who doesn't .... [cc] for deaf and hard of hearing is provided by brandon k. 2014 [c] eat your kimchi
