• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.469-488
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• 2012

International marriage is composed over 10% among total marriage in Korea. Korea is changing rapidly to the multi-cultural society. The researches need to inquire into what the state of 'ethnic communities of the immigrant wives as the minorities' is and how the immigrant wives build and develop the ethnic networks longitudinally. At the beginning, this study tried to know what kinds of social networks the immigrant wives use for the process of being married and for the adjusting to marriage and Korean culture. For the purposes of this study FGI and the interviews were applied for the immigrant wives and the specialist groups in metropolitan city DaeGu. 18 interviewees from Vietnam, China, Philippine, etc.. were collected by the snow-ball sampling. The social networks of the immigrant wives in DaeGu were mainly private, but were deterritorialized and reterritorialized actively. They managed the close relationship with their family members of motherland, and had the networks sticky with relatives, friends, and other immigrant wives from the same countries. Even though they acquired the Korean nationality, they have the transnational identities. But the internet environment of Korea can contribute to activate the social networks for the ethnic communities of the immigrant wives.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.33-48
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore factors related to marital satisfaction among immigrant wives compared to Korean wives of Korean men. Participants included 409 immigrant wives married to Korean men and 474 Korean wives married to Korean men, both currently living in Korea. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that there were different sets of variables that predicted marital satisfaction for each group. Egalitarian decision-making was a significant predictor of marital satisfaction for immigrant wives only, whereas for Korean wives, it was the level of their depressive symptoms that was significantly but negatively associated with marital satisfaction. A wife's positive perception of her husband's communication style emerged as the strongest predictor of marital satisfaction for both Korean and immigrant wives. In addition, indicators of the cultural context of immigrant women (i.e., longer stay in Korea and greater frequency of experiencing discrimination in the past year due to their foreign appearance or status) emerged as significant predictors of immigrant wives' marital satisfaction even after taking demographic factors, depressive symptoms, and couple-level factors into account. The findings of this study contribute to existing research by (1) comparing the models of marital satisfaction for Korean wives and immigrant wives, identifying unique predictors for each group, and (2) examining the effect of cultural adaptation on the martial satisfaction of immigrant wives.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.421-436
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• 2013

International marriage is composed over 10% among total marriage in Korea. This study tried to know what kinds of social networks, especially transnational networks, the immigrant wives use for the process of being married and for the adjusting to marriage and Korean culture, and how their Korean families also are affected by the transnational networks. For the purposes of this study FGI and the interviews were applied for the immigrant wives, the multicultural husbands and the specialist groups in metropolitan city DaeGu. 18 migrant interviewees from Vietnam, China, Philippine, etc. were collected by the snow-ball sampling. 5 husbands were collected from the self-help meeting in multicultural families support center. The transnational networks of the immigrant wives in DaeGu were deterritorialized and reterritorialized actively. Migrant wives managed the close relationship with their family members of motherland, and had the networks sticky with relatives, friends, and other fore-immigrant wives from the same countries. Their migrations are characterized as 'chain migration'. Even though they acquired the Korean nationality, they have the transnational identities. They and their Korean families are interrelated and internetworked in exchanging economic resources as goods and money, human beings, love, child caring, foods and culture over local boundaries.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.219-239
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• 2011

The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of husbands' sex role stereotype, intercultural sensitivity, and the acceptance of wife's culture on immigrant women's acculturation, marital satisfaction and life satisfaction in multi-cultural family in Korea. The data of 100 immigrant women and their husbands were analyzed. Husbands' mean age was 41.6 and wifes' mean age was 29.6. The results of this study are as follows. The first, husbands' sex role stereotype, intercultural sensitivity and the acceptance of wives' culture together explain only marginalization among wives' acculturation(integration, assimilation, segregation, and marginalization) significantly, but individual variable's effect was not significant. The second, husbands' acceptance of wives' culture explain marital and life satisfaction significantly. Third, only marginalization among four types of acculturation explain significantly marital and life satisfaction significantly. integration explain only life satisfaction significantly. Husbands' sex role stereotype is related with the acceptance of their wives' culture and their intercultural sensitivity negatively. In wives' acculturation, there is low positive correlation between assimilation and integration and moderate negative correlation between assimilation and marginalization. This study revealed that the marital and life satisfaction of immigrant women in intercultural family in Korea are explained by acculturation which was influenced by their husband's acceptance of wives' culture and they are not only immigrant wife's problem but multicultural problem.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.47-62
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• 2014

This study is focused on increasing of population aging and multicultural families in Korea. This study is conducted to figure out the marital satisfaction of marriage immigrant wives having elderly husband and to verify the effect of the social service and human support. This analysis was used in the '2009 National Multicultural Families Survey' data is at least 65 years of age, married immigrant spouses wife 236 case. Descriptive statistics were performed for statistical analysis and hierarchical regression techniques. The effective variables of the marriage immigrant wives include the experience of discrimination, subjective health condition, education for social adjustment, whether an adviser is Korean when they face difficulties, and whether the frequency of contacts made with their families in homeland is more than once to three times a year. Analysis shows that these things works as the effect variable of marital satisfaction.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.69-86
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• 2010

The present study examined the cultural sensitivity of community members to migrant wives in Korea. A total of 12 community members: 4 neighbors, 4 practitioners, and 4 public officials from both urban and rural area were interviewed about their prior experiences with migrant wives. The participants provided their personal feelings and thoughts on a variety of issues involving migrant wives, such as cultural integration, cultural knowledge, opportunity equality, cultural originality, language usage, openness, and the movement toward a more multicultural society. Interview results indicated that the participants had perceived others' prejudice toward migrant wives in Korean society; the results also indicated that they wanted to participate in cultural festivals and gain knowledge of other cultures. The majority of the participants endorsed a uni-directional perspective on cultural adaption, and they thought of migrant wives as community members. The participants' attitudes toward a multicultural society were both positive and negative, and they suggested that Korean society is moving toward a broader perspective. Implications of the study and directions for future research were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.477-487
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• 2010

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore health-related experiences of the foreign wives. Methods: A qualitative research design was used to understand the health-related experiences of foreign wives. Ten informants were interviewed from December 2007 to December 2009. Results: The health related life experiences of foreign wives were analyzed within a self development process; Choice and struggle, Change and opportunity, and Settlement and expectation. The theme of choice and struggle includes physical and emotional stress in the initial stage of marriage. The second process of change and opportunity focused on the coping strategies of the women having power after knowledge acquisition from the multicultural family support center. The last theme was health and happiness from the women' perspectives. Conclusion: This study has emphasized the health condition of the foreign wives. Since foreign wives are members of Korean society, health care professionals need to design health services to meet their needs.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.47-64
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• 2013

This study aimed to explore the social networks which married immigrant women have in Korea. Special attention was paid to factors such as individual, family, and migrant characteristics contributing to the different patterns of social networks. I drew upon the nationally representative data on 60,719 immigrant women married to Korean men from the '2009 Survey on Korean National Survey on Multicultural Families.' Results showed that the foreign wives tended to maintain a connection with our society through contact with their neighbors and participation in social gatherings. Findings also showed that the types of social networks by the number of trusted neighbors and meetings were diverse among the immigrant women. In addition, the factors differentiating the types were mostly associated with socioeconomic resources or Korean proficiency. More interestingly, the immigrant women's contacts with their family members in their homeland contributed to their maintenance of more active social networks. These results provided a useful outlook on the relationship between patterns of social networks and the characteristics of the married immigrant women, which eventually showed a heterogeneous nature among them. At the societal level, supportive systems for enriching immigrant women's social networks should be developed particularly in terms of not their dependency, but their potential contributions to our society.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.447-453
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to identify levels of parenting stress, depression and family support of immigrant women and to investigate the moderating effect of family support on the relationship between parenting stress and depression of immigrant women. Methods: The research was carried out with 86 immigrant women who were registered in multi-cultural support centers and receiving education in three cities South Jeolla Province. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis with SPSS/WIN 17.0. Results: The level of parenting stress perceived by the immigrant women was moderate and the level of depression was slightly high. The level of family support as perceived by the wives was slightly high as well. There was a positive correlation between depression and parenting stress but no correlation with family support. Effects of parenting stress on depression were moderated by family support. Conclusion: Results indicate that family support provided to immigrant women moderated effects of parenting stress on depression. Accordingly, as family support is critical to immigrant women, education and other programs need to be provided to promote understanding of family support as a help for immigrant women.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.203-236
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• 2015

Given the interdependence of a marital couple, this study examined the effects of both cultural challenge and economic hardship on intention to divorce among the multicultural couple using the actor-partner interdependence model(APIM), and explored dyadic patterns of actor and partner effects. 415 couples(n=830) participated in this self-administered questionnaire study. Results of path analyses based on APIMs revealed that for Korean husbands perceived cultural challenge contributed positively to divorce intention of the couple showing both actor and partner effects, whereas for immigrant wives such perception showed only an actor effect. In contrast, perceived economic hardship among the husbands had little effect on divorce intention of both husbands and wives, whereas such perception by wives had both actor and partner effects on divorce intention. Results of dyadic pattern analyses performed by Bootstrap indicated the actor-only pattern and the couple pattern of perceived cultural challenge on divorce intention of husbands and wives respectively. In case of perceived economic hardship comparison of the effect size suggested the partner-only pattern and the actor-only pattern for divorce intention of husbands and wives respectively. These findings implied that in order to promote conjugal harmony and to prevent the multicultural family from being dissolved, Korean husbands need to develop greater cultural competence so as to tolerate cultural differences between the couple, whereas immigrant wives and their families need to develop greater economic competence so as to foster a hope for economic reliance.