Seventh Cultural Post: Attitudes about Family in the Target Culture
Family is very important to Koreans. Family comes above all in Korean society-- or it used to. For Koreans, being born creates a duty to repay your parents with gratitude, sacrifice, and hardship in anyway that demands it. In traditional Korean families, the eldest son was usually the one given the most responsibility. The eldest son had to provide for his family if his parents could not, and he would have to take care of his elderly parents in their old age. Eventually the eldest son would also inherit the wealth of his parents, and it was his duty to ensure that the family would prosper. Females in the family, on the other hand, were not that important to everyday life. They were expected to do household chores and cooking, but it was expected that they would eventually get married off and join a new family, and after that she was her husband’s responsibility, not the family’s. To this day, Korean families are still very close together. Korean family members are very dependent on one another, and it is expected that for all of life they will continue to help each other. As female and male traditional roles have changed, so has the standard of living for families changed. With the advent of international work and college, I believe the standard Korean family no longer has a standard definition, though they are still very family-oriented.
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