Throughout the ages, people of different countries and nationalities have regarded marriage as a major event in life, so marriage etiquette has become the most beautiful part of folk customs. As a single-ethnic country, South Korea has its own characteristics that are different from other countries in terms of marriage customs.
There was no marriage system in Korea in the primitive period. After a monogamous family was created, a grand ceremony was held for men and women to marry. In the early days of the monogamous family, the wedding form was also very simple. The married man and woman only needed to announce to others that they were married and married.
In the Silla period from 676 to 935 AD, the wedding format changed slightly. It was not enough to announce it verbally. It was also necessary to invite family members and clansmen to set up a banquet and eat a meal, "the importance of which depends on the rich and the poor." Later, some Korean scholars summed up this form of wedding as "feast" and "shared food". This form of wedding was maintained for a long time and continued throughout the Goryeo Dynasty era from 918 to 1392 AD.
The marriage of the Goryeo Dynasty had its own unique way. When getting married, the man's family only sends wine and meat to the woman's family, not dowry. On the night of the wedding, relatives gathered together to congratulate them, and they dispersed with only three glasses of wedding wine. This is the inherent ancestral wedding custom. On the other hand, the practice of "marriage into a family", also known in Korean as "male to female" or "in-law to stay with wife", is also a traditional marriage custom on the Korean peninsula. This simple marriage custom is compatible with the backward development level of productive forces, embodies the concept of equality between men and women, and is also related to the great popularity of Buddhism in the Silla era and the establishment of Buddhism as the state religion by the Goryeo Dynasty. Because Buddhism advocates the equality of all beings.
In 1392, South Korea established the Joseon Dynasty, also known as the Lee Dynasty. The Li Dynasty highly praised China's Confucianism as a new concept and made it the state religion. In the following 500 years, Confucianism has been popularized in South Korea unprecedentedly, infiltrating all aspects of their lives, and greatly affecting and changing the traditional Korean marriage customs.
When Confucian culture spread, more and more emphasis was placed on rituals such as crown weddings and funerals, as well as the norms of words and deeds in daily life. In terms of marriage, Confucianism advocates parental arrangements, and the mode of marriage etiquette is the "six rites" which are both thoughtful and cumbersome.
South Korea during the Li Dynasty carried out the reform of the marriage system based on this, and formulated some specific regulations. In the actual wedding, from the matchmaking to the wedding, it is divided into 6 procedures: 1. The matchmaker builds a bridge, which is equivalent to the acceptance of the six ceremonies; 2. The "Four Pillars List", the sacred object of marriage, is the "Gong He Four Pillars" that determines the success or failure of marriage ("Four Pillars" refer to the year of birth, month, day, and hour, and "Gong He" is based on the "Four Pillars" combined with "Eight Characters", which is equivalent to the Han nationality. "He Bazi", which is equivalent to the name of the six ceremonies), 3. 3. The bride and groom meet for the first time at the wedding; 5. Two days after the big ceremony at the bride's house; 5. The coin and silk ceremony, that is, the custom of the bride formally salutes the man's parents and relatives and elders for the first time; Visiting relatives means that the bride goes back to her parents' home to meet her parents. With these procedures, the bride and groom become "people who have gone through six rituals".
In addition to borrowing and absorbing Chinese wedding customs and etiquette, South Korea still retains some of its own characteristics in the wedding system: one is "semi-personal welcome". That is, "the man returns to the woman's house", which is combined with the personal welcome ceremony to form a new form of wedding. First, the groom holds the wedding at the bride's house and stays at the bride's house. The next day, the bride was taken to the groom's house to meet her in-laws. The other is called "three-day return" or "three-day confrontation", that is, after the groom stays at the bride's house for three days, the bride is welcomed to the groom's house. Apart from the royal family and some scholar-official families holding weddings at the groom's house ("true personal welcome"), most of the weddings in the Li Dynasty were still based on "half personal welcome" or "three-day confrontation".
The Lee Dynasty was the last feudal dynasty in Korean history. By the 19th century, Japan had turned Korea into its own colony, Confucianism lost its dominance, and Confucianism and Western civilization clashed violently. Under the impact of the wave of social change, marriage customs are bound to change. South Korea has entered the era of new-style weddings.
Modern Korean youth have abandoned the old custom of arranged marriages, and both men and women are in free love. Many young men and women marry on the basis of personal feelings, emphasizing that "as long as we are happy". However, due to the influence of deep-rooted Confucian traditions, the Korean nation, which emphasizes etiquette, has not completely abandoned some important traditional etiquette in marriage customs. In the process of combining national tradition and modern life, they formed a new Korean-style wedding on the basis of learning from Western Christian wedding forms.
The marriage customs of modern Korea are the coexistence of traditional marriage customs, new-style marriages and religious weddings. Marriage customs in South Korea have developed and changed a lot, mainly as follows: First, the marriage age has increased from low to high. In the past, boys aged 13 to 14 or even younger would marry a wife a few years older than themselves, in order to have grandchildren early. And the wife takes care of the husband. Now the law stipulates that men can only get married at the age of 20 and women can get married at the age of 18, but in real life, both men and women are committed to work and study, and they marry later than the legal age. Second, the wedding has changed from complicated to simple, mainly Western-style church weddings, and the cost is greatly reduced. Whether it is the marriage procedure, the number of guests or the time and method of the celebration, etc. are becoming more and more simplified, people are freed from the heavy mental and financial burden. Third, the new marriage is free love, and the engagement ceremony is optional. Although the marriage ceremony varies from place to place, the general procedure is as follows: The wedding is generally held in a special wedding hall or ceremonial hall. On the day of the wedding, the bride and groom dress up at home or go to the beauty salon, the groom puts on a suit (tuxedo), the bride wears a white wedding dress, and then comes to the wedding venue with the family. The groom and his parents greet the guests on the right, while the bride's parents greet the guests on the left. After all the guests were present, the officiant arranged the seats and invited the mothers of the two families to come to the stage to light candles. The groom's mother lights red candles and the bride's mother lights blue candles. At the beginning of the wedding, the groom walks slowly to the front of the stage with the music, salutes the officiant, then salutes the guests, and then stands on the right to welcome the bride. The bride came slowly, putting her hand on her father's left hand to the music. The groom takes a few steps forward, salutes the parents of the bride, and then goes to the stage with the bride. The two saluted each other and turned around. When the officiant reads the marriage vows, the bride and groom should answer "yes". After the officiant announced that the two were married, the two turned around to salute the guests, and then walked out slowly with the music. Then, the families of both parties lead the guests to the place where the banquet was held. The bride and groom put on gorgeous traditional costumes and hold a coin and silk ceremony in a traditional wedding. Others put the coin and silk food prepared by the bride's house in front of the in-laws. The bride and groom kowtowed to their in-laws, who threw the jujube on the bride's skirt, wishing them an early birth of a precious son. Then they kowtowed to relatives and family members, and people gave them red envelopes for the bride and groom. The bride and groom take pictures together and leave a sweet kiss in the photo. After the wedding banquet, with the blessings of relatives and friends, the bride and groom go out for their honeymoon by traveling and start a new life.
Although traditional weddings are not suitable for modern life and are replaced by new-style weddings, for the Korean people who attach great importance to etiquette, they still retain some important traditional etiquettes, such as the gift of money and silk, and the ceremony of visiting relatives. Filial piety to both parents.
In Korea, doctors (self-employed), lawyers, and professors have the highest status. There are very few women in these three occupations, and most of them are men. If you can marry a man in these three occupations, the woman must prepare three keys for the man in advance: car keys, house keys, hospital or law firm keys (ie Get ready for the man's opening). This is a bit like the smell of an Indian woman who is married to her husband's family with a heavy dowry.
Marriage custom is a common cultural phenomenon, which itself contains rich social and national cultural psychology. South Korea is known as the "state of oriental etiquette", which is polite and respectful, modest and tolerant. In the process of social development, a large number of foreign cultures and traditional cultures are organically combined to produce a new type of culture with Korean characteristics. South Korea's modern marriage customs just confirm this.
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