mga sis eto pa ibang info: What a Filipina (specifically) could expect from a marriage to a Korean?
* Expect to be an unpaid household worker. It is quite expensive to pay someone to do house chores. A wife is expected to do the cooking, cleaning and anything else that needs to be done at home.
* There are three important celebrations in Korea (that most married women dread!): chuseok or the harvest festival, seol-nal (pronounced seol-lal) or the lunar new year and jesa (ancestral rite). In all these occasions, a married woman is expected to stay in the kitchen and SERVE the family (and visitors). the eldest (not necessarily oldest) daughter-in-law. If one is to marry a Korean who is TRADITIONAL (and non-Christian), then expect to be a maid on these occasions. Or make sure that you’re marrying into a Korean that Christian family.
* Marrying a Korean man doesn’t only mean marrying the man himself but his whole family as well. In short, there will be times when you have to give up on that special date just because his family would like you to join them in whatever they wanted to do.
* The Philippines and Korea are only four hours away by plane, but our cultures are different. To this day, Confucianism is deeply rooted in this country. It’s outdated but still, read up on Confucianism to understand Korean culture better.
* If you are going to live with his parents, act appropriately.
* Koreans love their food (I do too!). Your husband most likely will not eat your super-duper special adobo but he would expect you to cook and eat Korean food. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! In my case my husband is Professional Chef, so! i have no worries in cooking.
* A Korean man’s salary might go a long way in the Philippines, but it could sometimes only get you to the neighborhood sari-sari store here in Korea. I once talked to a Filipina, on the phone, who married her husband through an agency. She wanted out. She said she just got married because she wasn’t sure she would get a Japanese entertainment visa. She thought that Koreans are as well-off in Korea as when they are in the Philippines. I thought she must be pretty. She said she didn’t know her husband is a taxi driver and that they have to live with his parents. She wanted to divorce and would like to go back to the Philippines. It’s IMPERATIVE that you get married to a man you know and not to someone you don’t even know the name of. And true enough, there are some married women here who don’t know their husband’s name. Of course, even years of dating wouldn’t guarantee that you know a man fully well.
* Career opportunities not in the line of teaching English are difficult to find if you can’t speak Korean. You’ll need the language to negotiate.
* Koreans may seem to be the hardest working people on the planet. Why? They spend so much time at their workplace. Even if working hours is from 9-7 PM for salary men, it doesn’t mean that a Korean husband would leave his office at exactly 7PM. They usually don’t leave the office until the boss has left.
* If your future husband is working at a trading company and he sometimes travel, expect to do a lot of things on your own.
*Most of Korean man marrying a foreign woman, because they dont like Korean women that– uneducated, divorcee, old, farmer, living in the boondocks. If your (future) parents-in-law are not in favor of you marrying their son, it could be because of this dilemma. They don’t want society to think that their son is undesirable by Korean standards. However, if he still insists on marrying you then he must truly want you to be his lifelong partner. When there’s a will there’s a way.
Also, just because our cultures are different it doesn’t mean that we have to follow our husbands blindly. One shouldn’t expect everything to be all rosy after the honeymoon. That’s when the actual marriage begins. It depends on how much you trust and respect each other that will predict the lifespan of your marriage.
