South Korea (2024)

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is limited information on child marriage in South Korea, but reports suggests that child marriage could be driven by:

Trafficking: An increasingly number of South Korean men are marrying foreign women. As reported by the 2019 and 2021 United States Trafficking in Persons Report, some of these women are recruited and trafficked from China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia through marriage brokers. However, there is no data available on whether this includes girls under the age of 18.

South Korea has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. During its Voluntary National Review at the 2016 High Level Political Forum, the government highlighted that girls who receive a quality education are more likely to delay marriage and childbirth. The government has not submitted a Voluntary National Review in any High Level Political Forum since.

South Korea co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, and the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage. In 2014, South Korea also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

South Korea co-sponsored the 2013, 2014 and 2016 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

South Korea ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1984, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2019 concluding observation, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, expressed concern at the increasing rate of child marriage amongst the migrant community in South Korea. The Committee urged the government to prohibit child marriages without exception and to cooperate with the countries of origin to establish access to a civil registration system procedure to eliminate the practice of child marriage.

South Korea is becoming increasingly engaged in advocating against child marriage, through the “Better Life for Girls” five-year $200 million (USD) project. In 2017, the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) identified areas where it could increase programming in developing countries specifically to target child marriage prevention and response, which include:

$5 million (USD) towards girls’ education in Uganda in 2016. This education placed emphasis on educating girls on the harms of child marriage, adolescent pregnancy as well as educating men and parents/guardians.

$500,000 (USD) towards the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to set up technical and vocational training for refugee women.

$5 million (USD), in collaboration with UNICEF Ghana in May 2017, several programmes were implemented to address sexual and gender-based violence as well as child marriage and adolescent pregnancy. These programmes ran from May 2017 to March 2021 and covered Northern, Savannah, North-East, Oti and Volta regions of Ghana.

In South Korea, the legal age of marriage is 18 years with no exceptions.

Under Article 807 of the Civil Code 2011 the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years. The age of majority in South Korea is 19 years old, therefore if a person aged 18 wants to marry, they require parental/guardian consent.