No Marriage Registration, Yet Treated as Remarried… The Growing Number of “Ambiguous Singles”

We live in an age of many divorces. Even when people marry for love, marriage has become something many feel uncertain about.

“Representative Lee, my son feels so wronged. He had a wedding, but something happened that very day. They did not even go on their honeymoon and separated right away.”

I could hear the helplessness in the mother’s voice over the phone.

In Korea, the difference between a first marriage and a remarriage is considered very significant. This mother felt it was unfair that the son she had raised with so much care was being classified as someone seeking remarriage.

There was no legal marriage registration. But because a wedding ceremony had taken place, the marriage field may still regard him as someone who has had a de facto marriage experience.

Not long ago, another man complained to a matchmaker while trying to register as a member.

“Why should I be classified as remarried? Legally, my record is clean. Why should I be treated as remarried just because we lived together for a few months?”

He, too, had held a wedding and lived as a newlywed. But they separated without registering the marriage. He continued to feel that the situation was unfair.

Legally, without marriage registration, it is not a legal marriage. But the time they spent after holding a wedding cannot simply be erased. In Korean social sentiment, this matters.

The real issue arises when meeting the next person. Few countries are as sensitive as Korea about the distinction between first marriage and remarriage. When joining a matchmaking company or being introduced to someone, the same question keeps coming up.

“Have you ever been married?”

People in this situation want to answer,

“I never registered the marriage, so I am single.”

However, in the matchmaking field, if someone has held a wedding and lived as a married couple, that person is generally classified as remarried. Depending on the circumstances, the situation may be fully explained to the other party, and an introduction to someone seeking a first marriage may still be arranged. Even so, the person involved feels wronged. They want to be treated as never married, but at some point, it feels as though the word “remarried” has been stamped on their record in bright pink letters.

The problem is that more men and women are now finding themselves in this kind of situation.

In the past, once a couple held a wedding, registering the marriage soon afterward was taken for granted. Today, things are different. In the field, we increasingly see couples who hold a wedding but delay registering their marriage for some time. Some say they want to live together first before registering. Others delay it because of housing, loans, taxes, or property issues.

If they break up during that period, legally they are still single. But in the marriage field, it is difficult to regard them as completely never married. This is also a reflection of the uncertainty people now feel about long-term married life, even after holding a wedding. The marriage field today is becoming more complicated.