(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on May 12) - High wedding costs

In this peak wedding season of May, the city streets are congested with cars carrying well-wishers to wedding halls, churches and hotels. Economic recession has forced some unfortunate people to delay their wedding, but most engaged men and women tie the knot despite the high cost, which often results in huge debts.

Families cover part of the wedding costs with cash gifts from friends, relatives
and business associates. Wedding invitations are sent to a large number of people
and this custom causes considerable burden to those invited, particularly in this
economically difficult time. Conscientious people and civic groups talk about
changing Korea's costly wedding culture, but nuptials have become increasingly
extravagant, with government authorities taking a laissez-faire policy toward
wedding-related businesses.
Leading the trend are the top-class hotels in Seoul, where the cost of a wedding
easily hits 100 million won. The cost includes flowers, photographs, makeup for
the bride, the "pyebaek" gifts for in-laws and music by a quartet or a vocal
group, which are provided as a "package" in addition to the wedding banquet. This
kind of expense may not be a problem to the super-rich, but more and more people
with limited economic means choose to use major hotels as a display of social
status.
Wedding businesses thrive by taking advantage of this vanity. The result is not
only a waste of money but the wedding itself losing an atmosphere of solemnity
and turning into a commercial event directed by hotel managers and so-called
wedding consultants.
For a long time, the government banned weddings at five-star hotels on the vague
grounds of preventing "a sense of social incongruity." Since the ban was quietly
lifted several years ago, hotel weddings costing tens of millions of won for a
20-minute ceremony and a 40-minute banquet rapidly became the standard ritual for
the middle and upper classes. The impact is spreading to the general public
because of the cost-sharing custom of accepting cash gifts from guests. The
amount given is rising from 30,000-50,000 won to 100,000 won or above.
The education superintendent of a large city near Seoul faced social censure when
it was reported that he distributed invitations to his son's wedding to more than
2,000 people, including the headmasters and deputy headmasters of all schools in
the city, earlier this year. Meanwhile, a dispatch from New York revealed U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's son's wedding took place at a small Catholic
chapel in Manhattan last Friday with about 150 well-wishers attending. Cash gifts
were declined. Ban's two daughters similarly had "secret weddings" by Korean
standards while their father was Korea's foreign minister.
A wedding is an absolutely private affair and no government power can intervene.
But something should be done when statistics reveal that annual spending on
weddings in this country has grown 2.5-fold in less than a decade, from an
estimated 1.6 trillion won in 1999 to some 4 trillion won in 2007. The Postal
Service delivered 103 billion won in postal exchanges to families holding wedding
ceremonies last year. That amounts to about 60,000 won per delivery, a 40 percent
rise from 2005.
The only conceivable way of changing Korea's wedding culture could be more and
more socially influential people enjoying more frugal ceremonies. But to our
dismay, the trend seems to be going in the reverse direction.
sam@yna.co.kr
(END)