This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Asia from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Until recently breaking up was NOT hard to do here in Korea making it a country with one of the highest divorce rates in Asia. The system allowed couples who filed papers at the local government office and paid the equivalent of a couple of bucks to obtain a divorce in under an hour. But the era of the sixty minute split up is over. No longer can couples who have had a rough weekend file on Monday morning and be quit of each other by Monday afternoon. Oh no. Now couples’ve got to wait at least a month or, if they have kids, three months before a judge will declare their marriage endsville. Already the number of divorce petitions and the number of actual divorces has decreased. So it seems that the deliberation-before-liberation policy is working.

From the KU Center for East Asian Studies, I’m Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.