#100. 졸혼 -- the most searched-for Korean slang of 2017

Happy new year! As we send off 2017 and greet 2018, here is a short blog post about the most popular Korean slang of 2017.

Naver, as you probably know, is probably the most-used search engine among the Koreans (I often find that Google is not the best at searching Korean content; for example, Google often assumes that I made a typo when I am searching for some celebrity's name, and shows me the result for the more popular celebrity. What can I say, the Korean names are all very similar!)

Unlike Google, Naver offers various other services and entertainment. You can read all the headline news and celebrity gossip; you can read webtoons; you can find information about stocks and exchange rates; there are online forums not unlike Reddit; and you can read articles entirely dedicated to humour. Furthermore, Naver offers a good dictionary for various languages, which sometimes includes slang words in Korean.

The Naver dictionary team writes a blog post about various statistics at the end of each year. Among these is the most searched-for slang word of the year. In 2017, the slang word chosen by Naver was the word "졸혼."

The headline that prompted me to write this article.

This word, not really existent in the English language, comes from the combination of two words. "졸업," which means to graduate, and "결혼," which means a marriage. (You could have guessed, without actually looking up the meaning of the word, that "졸혼" had something to do with marriage, because of the Hanja letter "혼.")  Putting the two words together, "졸혼" roughly means that you "graduate from a marriage." You might say something like:

"우리부부는 이제 서로에게 간섭하지 않기로 했어. 이제 졸혼하려고." (My spouse and I decided not to get involved in each other's life. It's time to graduate our marriage.)

It almost sounds like a divorce, but for the Koreans who are after this lifestyle, it is definitely different. While a divorce is often heated and bitter, graduating from a marriage isn't quite the same. You look back at the good memories with fondness, you still support your partner, and you still maintain your marriage (like how you are still an alum to your old school, and occasionally make donations.) However, you no longer try to involve yourself in the life of your partner, and your partner does the same. Some people in the stages of 졸혼 might go on a long trip; some might start dating others; yet others might continue living their lives in the exact same way as before.

This post parodies the title of the popular Korean entertainment show, "We got married" (우리 결혼했어요). In that show, two celebrities pretend to be in a marriage and go through all the motions of a Korean marriage.

I suppose the idea of 졸혼 is somewhere between a marriage and a divorce. I think there are a few reasons in the Korean society why such a phenomenon might become commonplace.

In my previous post, I talked about how a Korean marriage is often a union of two families, rather than a union of two individuals. While Korean marriages are usually not arranged, this means that your family could potentially object to you marrying your one true love. They could decide not to support you at all financially (typically most Koreans will support their children with a significant amount of money at the time of their marriage, either in the form of cash, or by paying a large part of their apartment.) They could also decide to bully your spouse whenever there is a family gathering (the women feel this more than the men; hence the word 시월드.)

If you thought that a couple is likely to split while planning a wedding, a typical Korean couple plans a wedding and deal with two families who want the best for their respective child (who is clearly the best spouse there is!), and so they are even more likely to split in the planning stages. Even if they hold onto each other, I think the continuous nagging from their families really wear on the Korean marriage.

And Koreans tend to have less privacy --  your spouse (and their family) will most likely be interested in even your very private business, and perhaps they would like some space.

On the other hand, Koreans are still a conservative bunch. A divorce is still somewhat frowned-upon in the Korean society, and having a divorced parents is one of the reasons a family might reject a potential spouse for their child. So it is a huge decision to get a divorce, especially if you have a child. Not only will you be labelled as the divorcee, your child might have problems when it is time for him to marry. So as long as you and your spouse can't stand the sight of each other (and it's just a case of love not being there), there are social advantages to keeping a marriage going, at least in the eyes of the public.

Here is an image inserted into a Korean newspaper article explaining the word "졸혼." It explains that 졸혼 comes from the Japanese culture, where a couple maintains their marriage, but they live separately to pursue their personal hobbies, while meeting a couple of times each month. It seems that 57% of the surveyed Koreans felt positively about it.

There seems to be a lot of negative publicity on getting married on the Korean internet nowadays. People feel that there are so many unnecessary components to a Korean marriage (both financially and emotionally). The women feel that there is a significant risk that the in-laws will treat them like a servant (which is how a traditional Korean marriage worked), and the men feel that the women will quit their jobs when they marry (which is also how a traditional Korean marriage worked), leaving them to be the sole bread-winner of the family while the women enjoy their free time and the money that they bring home. You often see people writing that you should not get married if you are able to support yourself.

Despite that, this seems to have a neutral nuance. It's less of a taboo than 이혼 (divorce), and there is no underlying vulgarity that even the media feel fine using this word once in a while.

I haven't quite made up my mind about how I feel about this phenomenon of 졸혼, but I suppose I will go with my usual philosophy about these things -- as long as there is no harm done to the others, people are free to do whatever they want in their bedroom!