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R/£ Judges in bid to stop epidemic of quickie Korean divorces
August 30, 2006 Edition 1
Seoul: Monday morning is the busiest time of the week at divorce courts in South Korea as couples queue to end their marriages after bouts of weekend bickering.
"Too many angry couples come to court for a divorce after an argument erupted over the weekend," Judge Yoo Jae-bok, of the Taejon Family Court, said. "They need counselling, not an on-the-spot divorce."
On Monday mornings in particular, angry couples storm into divorce courts with tales of annoying relatives, husbands they complain will never earn decent salaries, and wives accused of bleeding bank accounts dry.
The couples are given forms, and clerks are on hand to help them fill in the paperwork.
The fee is just a few thousand won (a few dollars), a paltry sum often waived by the courts, and the divorce can take effect immediately.
The number of divorces in South Korea has almost doubled since 1995. Social stigmas that used to make couples reluctant to break up have faded as the country has become more prosperous and less bound by tradition.
Compounding the problem is a divorce law that enables couples to end their marriages on a whim. Getting a divorce can take less time and is cheaper than a night at the movies.
But some judges want to put an end to a quick and easy divorce procedure they say has caused South Korea's divorce rate to become one of the highest in Asia. "We judges can do something in our courts to reduce these types of divorces," Yoo said.
Yoo is among a group of judges in South Korea who are trying to lower the divorce rate by making couples observe a cooling-off period to consider the implications of a divorce on children and relatives before they can end their marriage. The judges demand that some couples seek counselling or at least wait a week or two before signing the paperwork.
It appears their efforts might be having some impact. The number of divorces in South Korea, which stood at 68 300 in 1995 and rose to 157 100 in 2003, has begun to drop. In 2005 there were 128 500 divorces.
Ruling party lawmaker Lee Eun-young hopes to put the full force of the law behind judges' efforts to help couples reconcile before it is too late.
She submitted a bill in November 2005 that would require most couples to wait three months after submitting papers in court before the divorce came through. "We desperately need a cool-down policy to stop married couples from facing a sudden catastrophe. We have to protect the welfare of their children," she wrote in her proposed legislation. - Reuters
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