Hwajeong Yoo
hy523@york.ac.uk
Cohabitation Phenomena and Strategies to Survive in South Korea - Focusing on One’s Sex and Sexual Orientation
My research area is on cohabitation phenomena and cohabiters’ strategies to survive in South Korea where the social mood is still against cohabitation. Although cohabitation is widely accepted as a choice of lifestyle or a part of family formation in Western countries, mostly Europe countries and the US, it is still taboo and has to be a top-secret for women at least in Korea. Apart from the issue of heterosexual cohabitation, lesbian/gay couples’ cohabitation is just unknown in Korea.
Drawing upon the assumption that one’s sex and sexual orientation may deconstruct the meaning of cohabitation and the traditional way of forming a family, I shall analyse cohabitation phenomena in Korea and attempt to demonstrate the various ways in which cohabitation is interpreted depending on one’s sex and sexual orientation.