The main purpose of this paper is to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted Korean families. The economic well-being of Korean families has been threatened because many family members lost their jobs or earned reduced incomes due to the pandemic. COVID-19 substantially changed the work environment and has provided the momentum for the growth of flexible work including telecommuting in Korea, which was not commonly used before the pandemic. However, the work-from-home arrangements created an ambiguous boundary between work and family, particularly among employed mothers because childcare facilities and schools were closed during COVID-19. The postponed 2020 school year started with online schooling in April, and children in secondary schools often continued private education during the pandemic. Although COVID-19 provided an opportunity to build emotional ties for some families, many Korean families who were stuck at home experienced relational difficulties. Socioeconomic and gender inequality along with discrimination against certain groups were heightened. Our analysis of social media posts showed that childcare, schooling, and religion were important domains of family life during the pandemic. We conclude that COVID-19 has changed the meaning of home in Korea from a place to sleep to a basecamp involving numerous major activities related to work, schooling, parenting, housework, shopping, leisure, and religion. Korean families have found it challenging to spend intensive time with their family, to share gendered family responsibilities, and to support other families. Thus, we suggest that professional and policymakers develop a new service model that is more effective for the changing family climate.

We provide a comprehensive review of family policy in South Korea (Korea hereafter) for international readers. Alarmed by recent social and demographic chan-

Using data from the 2009 National Survey on Multicultural Families, we examined the factors associated with the level of life satisfaction among migrant wives in South Korea. Separate analyses were conducted for the four major ethnic and national groups of migrant wives in Korea: Chosun‐jok (Korean Chinese), Han Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipinas. Overall, migrant wives' life satisfaction was significantly associated with health, Korean proficiency, relationship satisfaction with the husband, family material hardship, and family social status change regardless of ethnicity or nationality. Age, education, years in the current marriage, number of children, meeting with friends from the home country, community meetings, use of education and support services, discrimination, and Korean citizenship, however, were related to life satisfaction in different ways depending on ethnicity or nationality.

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Associate Professor : Chin, Meejung The aim of this study is to examine how perceived family-friendliness of community influences parents' efficacy and stress.This study asks three research questions: 1) what is the geographical boundary of community perceived by parents with pre-school children, 2) how the components of family-friendly community affect parents' perception on family-friendliness of their communities, 3) how the perceived family-friendliness of their community affects parenting efficacy and stress.Drawing on a sample of 628 parents(318 males, 310 females) who had at least one pre-school child, we analyze the data by frequencies, means and hierarchical regressions .The major findings are as follows. While the responses on the geographical boundary of community varies the most frequent response is 'Gu'. Both knowledge on family service infra and community social capital, which consist of family-friendly community, affect the perception of family-friendliness of community. The perceived family-friendliness of community is positively associated with parenting efficacy and negatively associated with parenting stress. The effect of the perceived family-friendliness of community on parenting efficacy disappears when social capital is included in the model. There is no such pattern in the association between the perceived family-friendliness of community and parenting stress.▲주요어(Key Words) : 가족서비스 인프라(family service infra), 가족친화적 지역사회(family-friendly community), 사회자본(social capital), 양육 효능감(parenting efficacy), 양육 스트레스(parenting stress)

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This study examined the factors that were associated with longitudinal changes for ten years from 2004 to 2014 in time spent on housework by married couples who had a preschooler as their first-born child. It also sought to figure out how much of such temporal changes were attributable to differences in the means on associated factors as well as to differences in the influence or slope of such factors. A total of 9,668 time diaries from the Korean Time Use Survey were used to analyze the influence of couple's weekly work hours, wife's relative income, couple's education and gender role attitudes on the time spent on housework of husbands and wives. Results from descriptive statistics, regression and decomposition analysis were as follows. First, women decreased, while men increased their time doing housework. Second, weekly work hours of husband and wife were related to their time doing housework in every year surveyed. Third, wife's relative earnings and couple's gender role attitudes affected wife's time doing housework more than husbands', whereas couple's education had stronger effects on husbands than wives. However, such influence was apparent on a certain survey year, and then disappeared in another, or became stronger or weaker longitudinally. Fourth, the temporal decrease in wife's housework time and increase in husband's housework time were attributable to social and cultural changes such as reduced working hours, rising female income, higher educational background, and prevalence of egalitarian gender role attitudes. Findings suggest that the trend in spending time on housework is expected to continue, and provide a timely policy implications to facilitate the change.--