[Seoul, December 9. Image via Getty]

A South Korean animal-rights activist in a costume protests against the sale of fur coats outside a department store in Seoul on December 9, 2009. The placard around her neck reads 'Animal life is unique and precious.' AFP PHOTO/JUNG YEON-JE (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Seoul, December 6. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - DECEMBER 06: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protest against fur at a MyungDong shopping district on December 6, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. The demonstration was organized by the PETA to protest against the use of fur in clothing. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

[Seoul, November 30. Image via Getty]

South Korean babies wearing diapers perform during a dance contest at a hotel in Seoul on November 30, 2009. The contest was sponsored by a diaper maker as part of its year-end sales promotion. AFP PHOTO/KIM JAE-HWAN (Photo credit should read KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images)

[Goyang, South Korea; Novebmer 23. Image via Getty]

Yuliya Kalina of Ukraine attempts a lift during the women's 58kg category event at the World Weightlifting Championships in Goyang, north of Seoul, on November 23, 2009. Kalina won the bronze medal. AFP PHOTO/JUNG YEON-JE (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Seoul, November 18. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - NOVEMBER 18: People protest the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama on November 18, 2009 in Downtown Seoul, South Korea. Obama is in South Korea for two days as the final desitination of his first Asia tour as the U.S. President. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

[Seoul, November 12. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - NOVEMBER 12: South Korean students take their College Scholastic Ability Test at a school on November 12, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. More than 670,000 high school seniors and graduates sit for the examinations at 1,100 test centers across the country. Success in the exam enables students to study at Korea's top universities. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

[Seoul, November 9. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - NOVEMBER 09: South Korean women make 'kimchi', a traditional pungent vegetable dish, which is donated to the poor in preparation for winter on November 9, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. About 2,500 housewives made 50,000 packets of kimchi. Made with cabbage, other vegetables and chili sauce, kimchi is the most popular traditional food in Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

[Seoul, October 27. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - OCTOBER 27: People wait for the H1N1 swine flu test at Korea University Hospital on October 27, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. The Korea Food and Drug Administration approved domestically developped vaccines last week, the government plan to vaccinate 35 percent of South Korean population until next February. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Today, the New York Times has an insightful article exploring the lives of single women who choose to become parents in the face of overwhelming disapproval.

Societal pressures play a large role in why South Korean women give up so many children for adoption. Interestingly, while abortion is technically illegal, it is estimated that 96 percent of unwed women opted for the procedure. Of those who carried the pregnancy to term, nearly 70 percent relinquished their children for adoption. The nation's government has tried to retain more of the nation's children, but as taken a hardline when it comes to the single mothers that bear them. According to reporter Choe Sang-Hun,

The government pays a monthly allowance of $85 per child to those who adopt children. It offers half that for single mothers of dependent children.

While the government says it is trying to increase the amount of support provided, look at the host of benefits the government provides to increase the declining birthrate:

To increase adoptions at home, it provides subsidies and extra health care benefits for families that adopt, and it designated May 11 as Adoption Day.

It also spends billions of dollars a year to try to reverse the declining birthrate, subsidizing fertility treatments for married couples, for example.

Throughout the piece, various women discuss how being an unwed mother has impacted their dating, family, and professional lives:

Families whose unmarried daughters become pregnant sometimes move to conceal the pregnancy. Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women's Development Institute.

"I was turned down eight times in job applications," Ms. Lee said. "Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty."

Ms. Choi, the hairdresser, said her family changed its phone number to avoid contact with her. When her father was hospitalized and she went to see him with her baby, she said, her sister blocked them from entering his room. When she wrote to him, she said, her father burned the letters. Last year, about three years after the birth, he finally accepted Ms. Choi back into his home.

In the face of all this, a group has formed to advocate for women being allowed to raise their children on their own. The Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network was founded to fight for the rights of women and has found international allies. The network was founded by an American adoptive father, who renounced his "rescue and savior mentality" after visiting S. Korea in 2006 and wondering why so many of these women were giving up their children. He decided to channel his energy into improving the lives of young women in Korea instead of helping other couples adopt children from the country.

As quoted from the site's mission statement:

The Network's primary focus is on raising awareness in Korea and amongst Korean groups in the US to effect positive change. The Network works to educate, inform and promote discussion about the difficulties facing unwed mothers and their children in Korea in order to elevate their economic, political and social potential in society.

(Image from the New York Times slideshow)

Group Resists Korean Stigma For Unwed Mothers [NY Times]
Illegal Abortion, South Korea's Open Secret [Reuters]
Official Site [Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network]

The Women Friendly Seoul Project, as detailed tartly by Time's Veronica Zaragovia, was the brainchild of Mayor Oh Se Hoon, and it's as bizarre as it is ambitious. Some of it is great: employment opportunities for women, "safe parks" for women, day-care centers, and women's taxi services and, not incidentally, more ladies' rooms. But apparently considered just as important are the pink parking spots (which, incidentally, rank a woman in heels as on a par with the physically handicapped) and paving streets - for heels. (It's unclear to me whether "improving lighting in public spaces" serves a safety or a cosmetic purpose.) In sum, says the official spearheading the program, they'll be targeting "the inconveniences, anxiety and discomfort that women in Seoul experience on a daily basis."

But while some of these things are big steps, it says a lot about a country that a woman's physical safety is regarded as no more important than her walk to the mall in heels - and that said heels are, implicitly, encouraged. It's too little too late for many Korean feminists: this is, after all, a country where at least 1 in 25 women is thought to work in a sex industry to which the government turns a blind eye, and where until very recently a strict patriarchal system was in place; even today, it's much harder for a woman to obtain a divorce than a man. Only half the country's female population have jobs, and those who do are subject to grueling schedules that make no allowances for children or family. As Zaragovia tells it, most women would rather have more childcare options than pink parking spaces. But others, says Jiyeon Lee of the Global Post, are happy for any quality of life improvements; one worker says approvingly, that because they're not going to change the country in a day, "I think it's so much better to invest in something that helps us in a practical way," like the parking spots.

A list Forbes just put out of "The Best Cities For Working Mothers," which evaluated things like medical care, cost of living, and high salaries, is an interesting counterpoint. While no one would claim that the U.S. is nirvana for the working mom - ideally, you wouldn't need to isolate a few cities - there is, increasingly, a sense of what's expected. Safety and childcare are coming to be considered rights, not privileges. And perhaps what's worrisome about the Seoul initiative is the sense that "women" are an issue separate from "citizens," who will be placated by the chance to wear heels and see more pink. If "happy women" -aka, women who aren't being assaulted in parks? - make for happy Seoul (otherwise, one supposes, the nagging harpies make men's life sitcom-horrible) then maybe they should ask women what would contribute to their well-being. Oh wait, I was just distracted by something pink.

Will High-Heel-Friendly Streets Keep Seoul's Women Happy? [Time]
The Best Cities For Working Mothers [Forbes]
Creating A Women-Friendly Seoul [GlobalPost]
The Best Cities For Working Mothers [Forbes]

Sex Trade Accounts For 1.6% Of GDP [KWDI]
Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea and U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases [NY Times]

Korea's 'Crackdown Culture' - Now It's Brothels [Asia Times]

[Seoul, July 29. Image via Getty]

South Korean women massage each other as they warm down during a training camp for civilians at a military base of the Special Warfare Command in Seoul on July 29, 2009. The drill is part of a summer programme organised by the army for 1,173 civilians including 406 women who have volunteered to experience hard military training. AFP PHOTO/JUNG YEON-JE (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Icheon, South Korea; July 26. Image via Getty]

ICHEON, SOUTH KOREA - JULY 26: Fans attend day three of the Jisan Valley Rock Festival on July 26, 2009 in Icheon, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

[Seoul, July 14. Image via Getty]

A South Korean woman carries an umbrella in heavy rain in Seoul on July 14, 2009. The Korean peninsula's monsoon season began on June 20, with Seoul having since received 490 mms of rain in the past 12 days, the most recorded since 1980. AFP PHOTO/JUNG YEON-JE (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Paju, South Korea; June 2. Image via Getty]

Women look at reunification banners displayed on the fence of the Freedom Bridge, at the civilian passage restriction line, near the demilitarized zone separating South Korea and North Korea, in Paju on June 2, 2009. South Korean and US forces on the peninsula are on heightened alert after the North threatened a possible attack in response to Seoul's decision to join a US-led initiative to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. AFP PHOTO/Philippe Lopez (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

[Seoul, May 29. Image via Getty]

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - MAY 29: Women cry during the public funeral of former South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun on May 29, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. Roh, 62, jumped to his death on May 23, 2009 while hiking in the mountains behind his rural southern home. Roh was embroiled in a multi-million dollar corruption case in relation to receiving more than 6 million USD from the Taekwang Group. (Photo by Cho Woo-Hae-Pool/Getty Images)

[Seoul, May 18. Image via Getty]

A South Korean woman puts on a traditional Korean flower cap during a 'Coming-of-Age Day' ceremony to mark their adulthood, in Seoul on May 18, 2009. The day is celebrated on the third Monday of May by young people reaching the age of 20. AFP PHOTO/JUNG YEON-JE (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

Choi Young-hee's decision to become a yenta may have sprung from her own difficulty in meeting someone after defecting from North Korea, but clearly she's no starry-eyed romantic; having survived a year in a Mongolian prison, she says starting a business was easy, and she saw a gap in the cross-peninsula dating market. Her business, South Korean Man-North Korean Woman Marriage Consulting, is named for a legend that South Korean men are handsome, North Korean women beautiful. Clearly, Choi does not shy away from stereotypes or generalizations; says a profile in the Los Angeles Times,

South Korean men are charmers, full of sweet talk, she says. But some overdo the cheesy compliments. Yet even at their worst, she says, they make better mates than North Korean men."North Koreans are hard men of few words. They don't have as much consideration for a woman."Some South Korean men have decided they want North Korean wives, who favor more traditional values. In many cases, their parents were displaced from the North during the Korean War, and they relate more to the culture there.North Korean women are also seen as exotic yet still Korean.

As seems to be fairly standard and depressing in such setups, Choi's client list has a 3:1 ratio of women to men. She provides the service free to North Korean women, presumably to spare them the difficulty she went through as en emigree on the dating scene. Says she, "Nothing is more important for us than marriage to settle down in South Korea. It is a turning point to start a new life." There's clearly a strong vein of pragmatism to the setup, and Choi admits that in a couple of cases women have used men they met for money, then vanished, while one guy promised a woman marriage, slept with her, then demanded a refund. South Korea only recently changed the laws to allow emigres to divorce their spouses, still up north, in absentia, and clearly for a lot of people the idea of a "new life" is quite a literal one.

It's interesting to contrast the pragmatism of Choi's business with the raft of matchmakers pop culture has given us in the last couple of years. While we are fed pragmatism glossed with romance, a setup like Choi's seems to strip the business down to its essentials, and if romance blooms, well, that's a nice benefit. Korean culture is, traditionally, one of arranged marriages, particularly in rural areas, so the notion of matchmaking does not have the stigma of desperation or sadness that it does here. And if it is based on generalizations, well, one can only assume that the realities of cross-peninsular marriages will do more to offset this, ironically, than anything else possibly could.

South Korean Matchmaker Found Her Date With Destiny [Los Angeles Times]