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Yang, Hyunah --- "Colonialism and patriarchy: where the Korean family-head (hoju) system had been located" [2013] ELECD 158; in Yang, Hyunah (ed), "Law and Society in Korea" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 45

Book Title: Law and Society in Korea

Editor(s): Yang, Hyunah

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443389

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Colonialism and patriarchy: where the Korean family-head (hoju) system had been located

Author(s): Yang, Hyunah

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

In February 2005, after almost five years of scrutiny, the Korean Constitutional Court found that the central articles in the ‘Family-head and Family’ section of the Civil Act of Korea were incongruent with the Korean Constitution. According to the decision, this section was particularly incompatible with article (hereafter, art) 11, paragraph (hereafter, para) 1 of the Constitution on the basic rights of equality under the law, art 10 on the protection of human dignity and art 36, para 1 on the protection of human dignity and gender equality in the marriage and family life.2 This decision was tantamount to a declaration that the family-head system per se was unconstitutional. Exactly one month later, the National Assembly passed an alternative Bill for the Civil Act that abolished the family-head system; this came into effect on 1 January 2008.3 Although the family-head system has now been removed from the law, this chapter will give a critical review of the system from the standpoints of sociology, legal history and feminist legal studies. The family-head system was a family institution stipulated in Books 4 and 5 of the Civil Act. The system regulated virtually every legal relation within a family by legally designating a ‘family head’ (__ ; hoju), usually an adult male, as well as the family members who would be represented by this family head. With this simple configuration, the institution exerted strong and complex effects on the family in Korea: