Divorce in Korea

During the past twenties years, the divorce rate has been steadily increasing in Korea. I personally think there are three main reasons for the increase.
One of the reasons is that today, women are more powerful and independent than before as they get financial ability and high education. In the past, even when couples have big problems in a relationship, or husbands do something wrong seriously, women used to be patient and hesitated to get divorced mainly because of financial problem and their children. However, today, as women work in a society and received high education, they get financial ability and tend to consider their own life first.
The second reason is that couples don’t have enough time to spend together as society changes fast. It causes results of rising divorce rate due to no communication between couples. According to the National Statistical Office(NSO), the 1st reason for divorce is cited as character differences between spouses and it’s approximately 50%. Also, the 3rd reason is trouble among family members. It shows that communication is the most important between couples in a marriage. However, today they are almost double-income families and life is busy, so they don’t have enough time to understand each other by communication.
The last reason is spousal infidelity. As spousal infidelity rate is increasing, divorce rates are on the rise as well. According to the latest news report, 40% of the divorce linked to infidelity.
The divorce rate of Korea ranked third in the world following the United States and Sweden. According to the NSO, 125,000 couples in Korea were divorced last year and fortunately, it has been increasing each year.