• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.183-202
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• 2012

Remarriages constitute an increasing proportion of all marriage in Korea. In 2010, 21.9% of marriage were remarriages for one or both partners. In spite of such increasing of remarriage, not much attentions were given the issues of remarriage in the academic circle of social welfare in Korea. This study is conducted to understand the nature of remarriage, the family structure in remarriage, the relationship between the boundary ambiguity and the family functioning in remarriage. Although boundary ambiguity is believed to be more problematic for remarriage families than first-marriage families and as such has been the topic of research in the U.S.A and other countries, few studies have focused on this topic in Korea. This study examined degree of boundary ambiguity of 125 samples of remerried women and their family functioning. Also, the study examined the relationship between the boundary ambiguity and the family functioning in remarriage. This study conceptualized boundary ambiguity as an incongruence between physical and psychological presence or absence of family members. The findings indicated that the majority of respondents(67.6%) were categorized as having both no psychological and no physical ambiguity. 19.8% of respondents were categorized as having physical ambiguity, 9.9% as having psychological ambiguity, and 2.7% as having both psychological and physical ambiguity. Statistically significant differences of family functioning in remarriage were found among four groups having different type of boundary ambiguity.