Birth: a Male's Prerogative

by Chung Hyo'n-gon

In Korea, recent reports said that in elementary schools a few male students were not able to have their female partners since there were fewer female students than male students. The reports said that this situation may be trivial but it seemed to be such a big problem for the male students and their parents that they looked disappointed and depressed and in fact, the situation points to birth ratio imbalance in Korean society. Two features of Korean society- the preference for sons and a social trend toward smaller families -, assisted by advance in medical technology, have brought about an imbalance in birth ratio, which is causing social problems.

The ratio of male to female in Korea points to a serious imbalance. It is seen across marriageable aged people and children. In 2001, according to Korea National Statistical Office (KNSO), there are about 4,380,000 males who are from 25 to 34 years old, meanwhile about 4,155,000 females at the same age. This means there are just 93 women for every 100 men. KNSO also says the situation is far worse in case of children. At the age of 5, for instance, there are some 377,000 boys, whereas about 330,000 girls, which indicates only 87 girls for every 100 boys.

There are two features of Korean society that have created the unusual imbalance of birth rate: the patriarchal system and a social trend in Korea. One feature of Korean society causing unbalanced birth ratio is the time-honored preference for sons. The preference, in turn, is caused by two reasons. One reason for the preference, deeply rooted in Korean consciousness, is that it is so important to keep their family name, which traditionally the male offspring always continued. The other reason for the preference is that sons, not daughters, continued to do tough work on the farm even after their marriage staying with their parents, meanwhile daughters left their parents when they got married. In agricultural society, labor was crucial for people in Korea working of the farm, who were the majority of Koreans. Parents lost their daughters' help but sons brought another assistant when they got married because sons' wives joined their family. Therefore, Koreans needed as many children as they could and wanted their babies to be sons better than daughters when they were expecting.

The other feature of Korean society causing the imbalance of birth ratio is a social trend toward smaller families, which is ubiquitous throughout the country. Since 1960s, a number of young people have concentrated in metropolises, particularly in Seoul, in order to get a better job and lifestyle. Therefore, they had to leave their parents in the countryside and made nuclear families in the city. In the past, young couple lived with their parents in the countryside. Therefore, it was not such a big problem for married people to take care of their children due to their parents' help. However, once they were not able to expect any help to look after their children in the city, the situation was completely different. In general, they have been too busy to take care of many children because they have normally worked in factories all day since the rapid industrialization of Korea. Consequently, people working in factories not on the farm did not need many children and even some of them were reluctant to have more than one child. As a result, usually people chose to give birth to sons.

Even though Koreans preferred sons to daughters, if there hadn't been advance in medical technology, they couldn't have chosen their children's gender. Recently, due to the ability of medical equipment enabling gender detection, parents have been able to confirm their baby's gender. Moreover, many of them use the technological development to have illegal abortions in order to avoid giving birth to daughters. A recent government study showed that an average of 30,000 female fetuses are killed each year. A research conducted by Gallup back in 1994 also said that for every newborn baby, 2.5 others were aborted, meaning 60,000 babies were born while the other 150,000 were aborted. Even though people usually say gender does not matter anymore, they seem to want to not only be informed of their child's gender before its birth but also have abortions.

On account of the imbalance of gender ratio caused by those reasons, there are social problems in Korea. One of the problems is that even though no certain statistical data is shown, there are an abnormally large number of unmarried men in the country who are mainly in their 30s because there are not enough women. Another problem related with gender ratio is that a lot of Korean unmarried men were hurt by false marriages. Since 1990s, single Korean men have been importing and marrying Korean Chinese women living in China. According to the Justice Department of Korea, over 30,000 Korean Chinese women living in China have been admitted into Korea to marry Korean men by early 2001. Nevertheless, some 7,000 women in about 25 percent of the marriages stole their husbands' money and escaped for China after their marriage. The crimes were found to be deliberate frauds.

The social trend toward smaller families is not unique to Korea, but the illegal abortions to avoid having daughters must be the situation that can be seen only in the country. Because of the traditional attitudes toward sons and daughters and the social trend toward nuclear families, aided by the development of medical technology, there is the unbalanced birth ratio causing such social problems as false marriages. None of the social problems caused by the imbalance of the birth ratio will disappear unless there is a dramatic shift in the traditional attitudes.