• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.111-129
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• 2012

This study aims to identify the motives of Cambodian marriage immigrants and their spouses in order to determine the factors that are needed for them to experience a successful marriage and a happy family life in Korea. This study's findings have been achieved through in-depth interviews with 10 married Cambodian female marriage immigrants and nine of the women's husbands. The following factors play a key role. First, the social environment in Cambodia is generally less developed than it is in Korea. Therefore, the immigrants tend to easily adapt to the advanced culture they encounter in Korea. Second, the patriarchal culture in Korea seems to be changing. Thus, Korean females are more respected now than they have been in the past. The Korean mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law appreciate their daughters-in-law and are trying to be more caring rather than treating them with prejudice that, in the past, had been leveled against foreigners. These factors help the Cambodian immigrants adapt to the Korean culture. Third, multicultural family support centers have become the place where these marriage immigrants learn about Korean culture and socialize with other immigrants. The husbands of these women actively participate in marriage counseling and family counseling, and they are also willing to understand the complexity of a multicultural society and the importance of family.

• Journal of health informatics and statistics
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.255-266
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• 2018

Objectives: This study compared the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight between native-born and foreign-born women. Methods: By Using the birth registration data, every woman who gave birth between 2010 and 2016 in Korea was included in the analysis. Duration from marriage to pregnancy was measured by month and multiple socioeconomic and demographic characteristics were controlled. Preterm birth (<37 weeks) and low birth weight (<2.5 kg) were used for outcome variables. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used for data analysis with Stata. Results: The risks of preterm birth and low birth weight for native-born and foreign-born women differed according to the duration of marriage or birth order. For the first infant, foreign-born women were more likely to have pereterm birth or low birth weight than the native-born in the early stage of marriage but nativeborn women had higher risks than the foreign-born in the middle and later stage of marriage. For the second infant, foreign-born women were less likely to have pereterm birth or low birth weight than the native-born regardless of the duration of marriage. Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrates that the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight for foreign-born women is concentrated on the early stage of marriage. Institutional and cultural supports should be given to foreign-born women to help their early settlement in the Korean society.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.131-172
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• 2018

It is noted that nowadays, the bride wealth custom takes an extremely distorted form in African society. Such a phenomenon is a result that the male-dominant culture, Western religions, and capitalist economic system have been negatively combined into dynamic factors seen as bride wealth. This means that the concept of bride wealth has been incessantly reconstructed in the middle of clash and conflict of tradition and modernity. There is also little doubt that the practice is inextricably tangled with the common and current ways of livelihood, early marriage, polygyny, kinship/family structure, poverty, and migration labor. Bride wealth has become an increasingly commercialized element under a capitalist economic system. Accordingly, its traditional symbolism is seen to be subsequently weakening, whereas a tendency towards the reification of women is strengthening more in modern society that embraces modern customs bent on the protection of women's human rights. Its commercialization has produced a result, which instigates the noted violations of women's basic human rights, gender inequality, and promotion of domestic violence. The ways that people perceive bride wealth vary according to their own sex, generation, stratification, and ethnic background. Those people who negatively recognize bride wealth will increase with the deepening of its commercialization due to the influence of capitalism. Its color and effect will deepen and depend on how its agents correspond to socioeconomic changes. They will constantly reinterpret and reconstruct it within their own environments, but the basic human rights efforts are constantly under review by concerned individuals seeking to promote equality for women as a global effort.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.75-89
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• 2010

The purpose of the study is to integrate multi-cultural families with special needs and situations into family living and Korean social groups. Nowadays there has been an increase in the number of international marriages. According to these changes, there are a variety of social problems such as cultural conflicts, domestic violence, difficulty in communication, and bad relationships between family members because of misunderstandings. These social problems can be alleviated by a family integration education program for multi-cultural families. This program was developed in order to help immigrant women in their initial settlement and to provide them with information on mutual culture of family living. The contents of the program consist of how to live a harmonious, understanding and hopeful family life. The method of evaluation is to survey the immigrant women's self esteem and conduct an interview. The results of the evaluation are to promote a positive relationship between family members. Also the family agreed to promote favorable sentiments toward each other. The program also had meaningful consequences for the improvement of the immigrants' realistic expectation of marriage and conflict resolution skills. I am hopeful that more elaborate programs for multi-cultural families will be developed in order to maximize the effect with appropriate education and support systems.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

Recently international marriage has been increasing steadfastly in Korea and its diversity of nationality has been expanding also. Korean government and academic circles are actively studying on such trends in population to find out proper measures to cope with such social changes. But their studies on improving the residential environment that is the base of the essential three factors of life, clothing, food and housing are not sufficient enough. Therefore it is necessary to study in depth and diversity about the residential environments of multi-culture families that are the base of their life. It is necessary to comparatively study the residential status and demands of these immigrants by marriage. The purpose of this study is to comparatively study the residential status and demand of immigrant women by marriage according to their nationalities. The objects of this study are the immigrant women by marriage from China, Vietnam and Cambodia who take the high portion of immigrant women in Jeonju-si and survey was used as study method. The result of this study revealed that the general characteristics, residential status and demands of immigrant women showed certain differences and the direction of residential plans for them in future based on these differences was proposed. This study is meaningful as basic information to improve the residential conditions of the multi-culture families in order to enhance their quality of life in preparation for the coming society of multi-culture.

• Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.405-418
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to suggest an educational direction to aid in formulating a dietary life that is suited to Korea's multicultural families. This was achieved by analyzing the dietary life of immigrant women from multicultural families in Daegu. The study was carried out with 94 immigrant women form multicultural families who were served by public health center A (20 women), public health center B (47 women) and public health center C (27 women). Their home countries were China (55.3%), Vietnam (37.2%), Philippines (3.2%), Japan (2.1%), Uzbekistan (1.1%) and Thailand (1.1%). When the scores of their dietary balance were compared on the basis of the time they have been in Korea (Less than 1 year, 1~3 years, more than 3 years), we found that the score of immigrant women who stayed for less than 1 year was higher than those who stayed for more than 3 years (p<0.05) in terms of their intake of meats, fishes, potato, calcium, and carbohydrate. When subjects were asked about Korean food they wanted to learn how to cook, 30 different types of food were selected and 95.5% of the respondents wanted to learn in detail how to cook Korean food. The place most suitable for them to learn cooking was college (30.3%), while the house of their husband (2.2%) was lowest. Therefore, it seems that a college, public health center or welfare center are good places for immigrant women from multicultural families to participate in an education program that is designed to teach them how to cook Korean food.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.12-24
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• 2017

This paper analyzed the representation of migrants in television with the example of KBS's My Neighbor, Charles. This primetime TV show with consistent popularity has showcased different types of migrants from other Korean television shows in terms of gender and race, and, partly the difference brought popularity to it. This study finds the major reason of the difference from changed migration patterns in Korea. Until recently, the main population of immigrants in Korea was composed of female brides and workers, but it became diversified to include male and the West migrants. This triggered the changes in media representation, but not thoroughly. Though the faces of migrant protagonists have been diversified, the remaining ideology of nation-centric that has been the main frame to regard migrants as someone to be integrated through traditional values persists. This study finds a few conflicts between the traditional and the change. For example, represented realities of migrants are extends to include their activities in public domain, disputes of multicultural society such as social differentiation and bias, and the criticism of Korean traditional culture. In a gender perspective, while all the marriages represented showed different kinds of vulnerability, discourses of traditional familialism were also clearly presented through different tools of representation. This study aims at contributing existing studies of media representations of migrants with a more complicated pictures in the context of social changes and migration population changes.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.415-426
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• 2015

This study examines the employment experience of beauty shop owners with respect to immigrant women. A quantitative analysis was conducted through a survey of beauty shop employers. Total 400 beauty shop owners were given a questionnaire and 380 responses were obtained. IBM SPSS 21.0 was used for frequency analysis, chi-square test, t-test using obtained data. Most of the respondents reported rare immigrant women employment. In addition, they were not likely to have experienced benefits from government support system and had little knowledge of such systems. According to an the employment analysis, there were differences in business areas, locations, regions, business type, and the number of employees according to characteristics of beauty shops. Immigrant women were more likely to be employed in Gyeonggi than in Seoul and Chungcheong Province and in skincareshops than in hairshops, nailshops and make-up shops. Shops with fewer than six employees were more likely to employ immigrant women. Those shop owners has employed immigrant women were more likely to hire immigrant women. Employment intentions of employers included mitigation services for auxiliary and sharing purposes, government benefits, and solutions for employment difficulties. Government support had a positive effect on employment intentions of beauty shop employers. Employers with knowledge of government support programs were more likely to hire immigrant women. The results suggest that the government should make more efforts to promote relevant policies. Future research should identify the reasons why few immigrant women are employed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.807-815
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• 2012

This study was carried out to investigate the factors affecting the dietary adaptation of female immigrants in multi-cultural families in Busan. The survey was conducted from October 10 to November 30, 2010 using questionnaires, and the data was analyzed using the SPSS program. The subjects were mainly from China (58.8%), Vietnam (14.7%), Philippines (8.8%) and Japan (7.4%). The longer they had resided in Korea, the lower their preference they had for Korean foods. There were no significant differences in preference according to their nationality. The subjects reported that their consumption of cereals (36.7%), meats (40.0%), fish (50.8%), milk and dairy products (47.4%), vegetables (48.3%), fruits (44.8%), fat and oil (29.1%) and beverages (32.8%) were increased after immigration. They usually obtained information about Korean foods from family (26.5%) and television and internet (26.5%). Sixty four point seven percent of the females ate 'everyday' Korean foods and 30.9% ate their home country foods every day. A higher will for learning Korean foods, intake frequency and age resulted in a higher adaptation of Korean dietary life. Lower marital conflict resulted in higher adaptation. These results suggest that it would be effective to provide systematic nutrition education program for female immigrants and their families to adapt to Korean dietary life.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.32
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• pp.335-361
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• 2013

This study examines the ethnoscape of TV dramas on three Korean nationwide television channels from 2005 to 2012 by breaking down how many non-Koreans appear and how they are represented. Among all TV dramas, 6.4% show non-Korean characters of which are generally supportive or small roles. These characters are categorized into four groups: adoration, sympathy, proximity, and other. The adoration group consists mostly of white males from USA or Europe that have professional careers such as medical doctors or lawyers and are positively represented with attractive appearance and nice character. On the other hand, the sympathy group is made up of Southeast, Central Asians and blacks. They are mainly represented as an underprivileged group: females and low-paid workers. In the proximity group are the Japanese and Chinese characters. The Japanese are often represented as rich people that are highly competent or are able to easily cooperate with Koreans. This result shows that Korean TV dramas provide racial and ethnic stereotypes. Though rarely, some dramas represent various lives of foreigners and racial others in Korea. This study contributes to the establishment of sound multiculturalism by analyzing representation of racial others in TV dramas and internalized stereotypes of foreigners in the diverse and multicultural Korean society.