Living Single a Choice for Career Women > 영어토론방

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For women in the still Confucian Korean society, it is difficult to balance work and family commitments. So a growing number of career women in their 20s and 30s opt for promotions and earning higher incomes, rather than the traditional role of wife and mother. “I’ve never dreamed of quitting my job to become a full-time, faithful homemaker taking care of husband, children and in-laws,’’ said Kim Young-min, 37, who work as an analyst for the Asset Management Association of Korea. To her, real happiness does not necessarily come from marriage and motherhood.

She believes real happiness comes from ``economic freedom’’ among other things. Even if financially independent of their husbands and parents, women find themselves being ignored when it comes to important decisions such as home purchases, she said. Well aware of this situation, she flew to Guam in Southeast Asia to earn an AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountant) degree in late 2001, and early this year began to study financial risk management (FRP). She studied economics at Ehwa Womans University.


``I plan to take a professional course to win a doctorate degree in FRP. I know educating myself professionally is the most valuable investment after all,’’ Kim said.

She is typical of the tribe of "Contra Sexual" women, who put more emphasis on career success and high income than marriage and child rearing. In its annual customer profile research (CPR), a team of six advertising companies found 49.7 percent of single women in their 20s and 30s said that money is the barometer of success. The six major advertising companies __ Diamond Ad, LG AD, MBC ADCOM, TBWA Korea, HAN COMM, and Phoenix Communications __ conducted the 13-year-long CPR survey in May and announced the results in November. TBWA Korea said that an increasing number of Korean women are willing to delay getting married as they think marriage will never be of a help to their social activities. In the CPR of 5,500 women aged between 13 to 59, 57.6 percent of the respondents put happy home before successful job, but only 46.6 percent of single women in 20s and 30s did so.

Five out of 10 single women said marriage is an option in their life, four out of 10 said no children was okay with them and six out of 10 replied divorce is no longer an infamous brand on women. Money is not everything to her but it’s true the more the better. She needs at least 50 million won ($48,000) to support herself and prepare for retirement, the CPA stated. Song Young-ju, 33, an interpreter for Samsung Securities, is another Contra Sexual model. ``It would be intolerable if my would-be husband asked me to quit my job to marry him,’’ she said. Song who is not considering living single said her man should be cooperative and open-minded enough to evenly share house chores and child-care with her. But most of all he should be respective of her job and listen to her when making important decisions.

She hopes that her future husband will share her outdoor activities such as climbing mountains and joining book or wine clubs on the weekends. She scales about 20 mountains across the country every year. ``However, if I don’t marry, I will focus on such activities while developing myself. I am considering studying insurance at graduate school,’’ said Song. On top of the intangible investments, she has tangible investments. She invested in two financial products on a lump-sum basis and put money in regularly on a monthly basis.

Former Justice Minister Kang Kum-sil was her role model as she was impressed by her way of working and soft charisma which worked in the male-dominated government organization. Song is so strong willed that she spent years working to enter the prestigious Graduate School of Interpretation of Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She studied English education at Kyunghee University. Lucy Choi, 34, who teaches English to CEOs mainly based in Seoul, earns about 5 million won a month but has no plan to marry.
 
Making as much money as possible is her ``most urgent task’’ as she plans to study an MBA course in the United Kingdom next year. She studied mass communication at Sogang University. ``If I am a doctor, I will be proud of the achievement. But if my husband is a doctor, it’s not mine after all. The thing is that I myself have to achieve what I want most,’’ she added.

Question
1. What is your future dream? Would you give up because of your marriage?
2. What do you think about people staying unmarried?
3. Will you marry or remain single? Tell us about your future plan.
4. Talk about the good things and bad things about marriage.

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