뉴욕타임즈에 실린 한국 결혼에 대한 글

개인적으로 한국의 축의에 대해 부정적이지만은 않다. 과거 농경사회에서 이웃간의 품앗이는 당연한 일이었다. 서구의 시선으로 볼 때 집단적 상호 협력은 개인의 사정보다 집단의 사정이 우선되는 것을 이해하는 것이 쉽지 않을 것이다. 

다만 도를 넘치는 축의의 부분은 재고할 필요가 있다. 축의의 상당 부분이 결혼 예식에서 식사 비용으로 들어가고 결혼에 앞서서 양가 가족의 인사에 필요한 비용에 들어간다. 그런데 양가의 경제적 위치가 차이가 클 경우 문제가 될 수 있고, 또 사회적 지위에 따른 품위 유지(?)라는 측면에서 소비를 부추기는 경우가 있다. 

또 한가지는 한국 사회가 체면 문화라는 것이 결혼의 문제가 된다. 아마도 본 글의 의도는 이 체면 문화에 대한 비판이라 생각한다. 하지만 체면이라는 말을 사회지위와 맞물려 본다면 조금은 다르게 생각해 볼 수 있다. 서구 사회에서 귀족들의 노블레스 오블레주<noblesse oblige>를 본다면 일종의 체면으로 볼 수 있다. 다만 서구인에게 있어서는 개인의 명예와 관련된다면 한국인에게 있어서는 사회적 지위와 맞물려 있어서라고 생각한다. 봉건사회의 계급 사회에서 일정 계층의 과소비는 빈곤층에게 흘러들어가는 일종의 기부문화였다고 판단한다. 서구 사회는 여전히 그것을 노블레스 오블레주 라는 문화로 만들며 아래로 흘러가고 있다면 한국의 문제는 부가 고여서 흘러가지 않는 것에 있다는 것이다. 그렇게 진단한다면 허례허식의 문제는 전통에 있지 않고 나눔이 사라진 문화 또는 이기주의로 채워진 사회 문화가 그 원인이 아닐까? 

조금 한국의 문화를 모두 부정적으로 볼 것이 아니라 왜 그런 문화가 있게 되었는지를 추적해 본다면 우리만의 문화를 통해 우리 자신을 이해하는 과정이 될 것이고, 한국 사회가 우리와 어울리는 형태로 나아가지 않을까 생각한다. 

글이 생각대로 써지진 않지만 적어도 한국인의 체면 문화가 원래 나쁘진 않았다고 생각해 볼 수는 있다는 생각을 해 볼 수는 있을 것 같다. 서구문화의 합리적인 것이 우리에게 맞지 않을 수 있다는 생각에서 접근해 봤다.

Questioning a Korean Wedding Tradition

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By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: November 17, 2009

When a daughter of Kim Jong-chang, South Korea’s top financial regulator, got married last June, Mr. Kim did something unusual: He eliminated the cashier and the cash-filled envelopes.

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Park Jin-hee for The New York Times

Wedding guests hand in cash envelopes to cashiers at a Seoul wedding on Oct. 24. They also get food tickets that allow them to have the meal served after the wedding.

These are fixtures of a South Korean wedding, as much so as the wedding officiant. Before entering the wedding hall, guests line up in front of the cashier’s table to hand over an envelope stuffed with cash. The cashier opens the envelope and registers the guest’s name, and the amount given, in a velvet-covered ledger — often while the guest is still standing there.

“The problem with this tradition is that it can be abused for bribery,” said Mr. Kim, governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, which regulates the South Korean banking and securities industries. “In my case, many banking officials would have shown up with cash gifts. They would have wondered whether I was annoyed that they didn’t put enough in the envelope.”

Chipping in to help friends defray wedding or funeral expenses is an old custom here. But in recent months, it has been criticized as wasteful, and sometimes even as a conduit for vote-buying and bribery.

In May, after some critical news stories about extravagant weddings being held at five-star hotels during the economic downturn, President Lee Myung-bak exhorted South Korea’s rich and powerful to set an example in fighting the “vain and extravagant” wedding culture.

Mr. Kim is one of a small but growing number of people, from ordinary families to dignitaries, who are joining this campaign, refusing to accept cash gifts and keeping their guest lists relatively short. Ban Ki-moon, the South Korea-born secretary general of theUnited Nations, invited only a few close friends and relatives to the wedding of his son in May, as did Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan when his daughter married in April. In October, Chung Jung-kil, Mr. Lee’s chief of staff, followed suit.

Still, these low-key weddings were considered such oddities that they made the news.

In South Korea, where “face” is famously cherished, the measure of a family’s social standing is seen in the number of guests at weddings, as well as the amount of money given and the sumptuousness of the banquet. At funerals, the number of wreaths presented by friends, business associates and local politicians is a comparable social metric.

“Here, a wedding is less a celebration than an occasion for a family to show off,” said Lee Yoon-ji, who runs a wedding management agency and photo studio in Seoul’s upscale Kangnam district. “For instance, if the bride’s family finds its guests are much fewer than the groom’s, it’s humiliating.”

Some families send out thousands of wedding invitations. A bank account number is sometimes included so people who can’t attend can still send money.

Often, the decision of whether to attend is based on whether the couple, or their relatives, attended weddings or funerals in one’s own family — or might be expected to. Families keep records of how much they receive and from whom so that they can reciprocate. Failure to do so can ruin a friendship.

“Sometimes you even get invitations from people you don’t know very well,” Mr. Kim said. “They arrive like tax bills or I.O.U.’s.”

Every year, the roughly 330,000 South Korean couples who get married spend an average of 15 million to 20 million won, or $13,000 to $17,000, in wedding expenses, said Lee Woong-jin, head of Sunoo, a matchmaking company that conducts an annual survey on wedding expenses. The cost can exceed 50 million won for hotel weddings.

Much of that is covered by the cash gifts. Last year, South Koreans gave out 8 trillion won, or 524,500 won for each household, in cash gifts for weddings and funerals, according to the National Statistical Office.

“This is a ‘you-help-me, I-help-you’ tradition. I don’t see anything wrong with it. You chip in and you get help in return,” said Han Seung-ho, 33, a photographer whose wedding in October attracted 370 guests. “Without their cash gifts, my wedding would have been a serious financial burden for me.”

But these envelopes also reflect a culture in which giving cash is considered so natural that people sometimes call it a “greeting” — and, in some cases, use it as a cover for bribery. When South Korea’s election laws were revised in 2004, they banned politicians from giving cash envelopes, except at the weddings and funerals of close relatives.

Three candidates running for election at provincial farmers’ and fisheries’ cooperatives were indicted in September and October on charges of giving cash gifts at voters’ weddings. A provincial education chief was widely criticized in the media in April after he reportedly invited 2,000 people — including the principals of all 460 schools under his jurisdiction — to his son’s wedding.

Chung Woo-jin, 50, president of Q&Q Medi, a medical supplies company, said many wedding guests show up “reluctantly,” fearing they might lose out on business contracts or promotions if they don’t. “So they show up to prove that they were there, give the envelope and hurry off to have the meal, without even taking a look at the bride or groom,” he said.

Mr. Chung refused to accept cash envelopes at his mother’s funeral in June. But he said he still felt compelled to attend 40 to 50 weddings or funerals a year for friends, employees and business acquaintances, each time donating an average of 100,000 won.

Meanwhile, some younger couples are rebelling against what they call a “commercial” wedding culture controlled by parents. It is generally the parents who send out invitations, collect the cash and pay for the wedding, and by and large, more guests are there for the parents than for the couple getting married.

“Some of my friends feel frustrated, wondering if their wedding is for them or for their parents,” said Lee Eun-jeong, 35, who works at a publishing company in Seoul. She limited her wedding in June to 135 guests and did not accept envelopes. “We also hate it when a friend who hasn’t contacted us for years suddenly gets in touch with us before her wedding, obviously with our envelopes in mind,” she said.

South Korea has seen campaigns for wedding frugality before. In 1973, the late military strongman Park Chung-hee tried to ban written invitations, flowers and gifts from weddings and funerals, in the belief that such customs were wasteful and detracted from his campaign to build and modernize the economy.

But enforcement was sporadic at best, and experts say weddings grew more extravagant after 1999, when the restrictions were lifted and five-star hotels and wedding agencies entered the market.

Mr. Kim, the financial watchdog chief, predicted that it would be some time before the cash envelope tradition faded.

“Frankly, I found myself thinking, ‘I’ve given out all these envelopes over the years. Why shouldn’t I get them once for my daughter’s wedding?”’ he said. “It’s not always easy in our weddings to tell the difference between bribes and genuine gifts.”