• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.147-163
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• 2016

Multicultural Family Support Centers (MFSC) have provided five program areas including family, gender equality, human rights, social integration, and counseling since 2015. It is important to examine the MFSC staff's perceptions of the family programs and program needs for multicultural families to improve the effectiveness of these programs. In this study, we aim to explore the staff's perceptions of the family programs and to assess multicultural family program needs based on the family life cycle. A total of 130 MFSC staff were recruited through 128 MFSCs across Korea. Descriptive statistics were conducted for data analysis. Our findings revealed that MFSC staff have increasingly recognized that their target audiences are not only marriage immigrants and their families but also foreign workers' families and families from North Korea. In addition, the MFSC staff identified the importance of family programs instead of only programs for individual family members and multicultural families' different program needs based on their family life cycle. Contrary to the positive perception of the family programs, they described challenges of the family programs including a shortage of funds, difficulty recruiting family member combinations (e.g., couples, parent-child) for family programs, a lack of a program manual, and a heavy workload. This study provides insights into the family programs including their development and delivery.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.60-72
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• 2022

Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the Korean medical utilization and Korean medical expenses by characteristics of multicultural family members to investigate whether it affects Korean medical utilization. Methods: This study utilized The Korea Health Panel data in 2018, with 238 final participants. We performed a t-test and ANOVA on the difference between Korean medical utilization and Korean medical expenses according to Anderson's Model of Health Service Utilization variables. Logistic regression analysis and generalized linear model analysis were conducted to analyze Korean medical utilization factors. Results: The Korean Medical utilization was 12.61% among the multicultural family members. As a result of regression analysis, the female had high Korean medical utilization(p=.008), and rural area residents had low utilization(p=.017). Korean medical expenses were high when they were female or married. Including the utilization of western medical services by outpatients, Korean medical expenses were high when they were female or outpatients who received western medical services. Conclusions: As a result of this study, the factors influencing Korean medical utilization were gender and residence area. There were differences in Korean medical expenses depending on western medical services use or gender. Therefore, it is necessary to use these factors to expand the Korean Medical utilization by multicultural family members, and research of the Korean medical utilization by disease is needed.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.103-117
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• 2015

Family environment plays a significant role in adolescent development. Multicultural adolescents in Korea are brought up in a distinctive family environment, where they get to experience two different cultures within their families. Thus, it is important to examine how internal characteristics of the family environment in multicultural families and interactions between family members influence adolescents. The aim of the current study was to examine structural relationships among Southeast Asian mothers' and Korean fathers' bilingual socialization, adolescents' attitude toward mothers' native culture, and mother-adolescent relationship satisfaction. Specifically, the following two questions were addressed in this study: 1) Does bilingual socialization of each parent affect adolescents' attitude toward mothers' native culture? 2) Does children's attitude toward mothers' native culture affect mother-adolescent relationship satisfaction? To answer these questions, the survey data from the '2012 Nationwide Survey of Multicultural Families' was analysed, using SEM. The sample consisted of 318 multicultural adolescents (aged 9-17) living with Korean fathers and immigrant mothers from Southeast Asia. The main findings were as follows. First, Korean fathers' bilingual socialization had a positive effect on immigrant mothers' bilingual socialization. The path from Korean fathers' bilingual socialization to adolescents' attitude toward mothers' native culture was significantly mediated by immigrant mothers' bilingual socialization. Second, adolescents' attitude toward mothers' native culture had a positive effect on mother-adolescent relationship satisfaction. Results suggest that Korean fathers' bilingual socialization is an important factor for bilingual socialization of multicultural adolescents. It is also worth noting that each parent's bilingual socialization helps multicultural adolescents to form a positive identity as a member of multicultural families.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.61-76
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• 2018

The demand and supply of programs of parenthood programs for fathers are increasing with changes in the image of male parents. Under this backdrop, a necessary requirement is to analyze the current status of father programs that are spearheaded by governments and the satisfaction with them to determine if they actually meet the needs of fathers. This study conducted such an examination for the fatherhood programs that were provided as a mandatory public service by the Healthy Family & Multicultural Family Support Center in 2017. To this end, the research analyzed performance and satisfaction data on 776 projects, including 1293 programs that were required for provision in 101 integrated centers nationwide. The results showed that satisfaction with fatherhood programs differed according to the project area, the location of a center, the period of implementation, the methods of proceeding, the participation unit (whether an entire family or an individual family member), the number of participants, and the number of sessions. Overall, the level of satisfaction was higher in "fathers meetings" (under the community domain) than "support for the father role" (under the family relationship domain). In relation to implementation period, satisfaction with the programs was high in the 4th quarter of implementation. Satisfaction with the programs was also higher for culturally based initiatives than education-oriented programs. Satisfaction was higher when the participation unit was the family than when such unit was the individual. The smaller the number of participants, the higher the satisfaction level. Finally, the number of sessions was deemed satisfactory when it was completed in more than four sessions. This study is meaningful in that it provides the basis of effective use of the government budget by analyzing the status and satisfaction of the fatherhood programs, which have been implemented since the integration of the Healthy Families & Multicultural Family Support Center.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.464-477
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• 2009

This research analyzed reality of multicultural education of Korea and suggested policy implication through a questionnaire survey of teachers, students, and parents in elementary schools, Daegu City. Multicultural policies in Korea mainly helped a member of multicultural family who immigrated into Korea to learn Korean language and culture. Thus, the common people have a few chances to have multicultural education; however they mainly experienced multiculture indirectly through mass media. Therefore they had low level of understanding and satisfaction and their consciousness was narrow. Most of people completely come out in sympathy with that multicultural education should be taught at school. To overcome the current issues of multicultural education, its goals, contents and tasks should be clearly established. Multicultural education is taught from elementary school in holistic approach; however, methods of learning and teaching are different according to a curriculum.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.299-321
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate how marriage migration females understand and adjust to the culture of family life in Korea. The study was the conducted by extensively interviewing one member from each of a total of 16 women's multicultural families at a daycare center area in Seoul between June 16, 2010 and July 28, 2010. The results can be summarized as follows: All interviewees were marriage migration females, in the range 20 to 50 years of age, and with middle educational backgrounds. They all had middle-level incomes. Through the content analysis of the informants' responses, three major factors were found to influence the understanding and adjustment of to the culture of family living: personal factors, familial support, and sociocultural support systems. Among the personal factors, the intimacy of the married couples was trouble major factor. An issue that tended to arise was that Korean husbands' traditional culture in terms of their way of thinking was often different from that of the wife's culture. However, husbands supported their wives' outside activities and friendships in order to help them adjust to the culture of family living. The husbands made an effort to understand their wives' original culture and national food, often visiting restaurants that served their wives' national cuisine. In terms of familial support, the most important factors affecting marriage migration females were orienting the education of children to the mother's native language, cooking their national foods, and visiting the mother's nation with the children. Marriage migration females had the following requires: The teacher in the daycare center needed to be interested in children from multicultural families and encourage self-pride in the marriage migration females' children. In terms of sociocultural support systems, marriage migration females are conscious of the indisposition and lack of consideration in Korean life. However, the Korean government and local provinces are concentrating attention on education for marriage migration females in terms of language, because learning the language can help these women to become accustomed to the rituals of Korean life. Marriage migration females make an effort to understand and adjust to Korean family living culture that involves the food culture for ceremonial occasions, folk plays, and places of historic interest. A matter of importance is Korean people's effort to understand and adjust to multicultural family with their distinctive cultures. Welfare policy related to multicultural families involves adopting supportive laws and actions.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.99-132
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• 2019

Like many other Asian American writers, Jhumpa Lahiri writes stories that capture the experiences of immigrant families in America. What sets The Namesake apart is that Lahiri cleverly uses the names of her characters to shape their individual lives and futures not just as a first or second generation immigrant, but as people who are more than what that labelling connotes. Although the struggle faced by Ashoke and Ashima to hold on and adapt as first generation immigrants is contrasted with the search for identity among second generation immigrants seen primarily through the experiences of their children Gogol and Sonia, Lahiri uses their struggles as an immigrant family to serve as a starting point for each member of the Ganguli family to find their own identities and understandings of who they are as individuals apart from their race, history or cultural heritage so that they may truly be "without borders."

• Journal of Family Relations
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.103-130
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• 2017

Objective: This study explored benefits of a bibliotherapy program using picture books for self-growth supporting married Immigrant Women settle down as a healthy member of the Korean society. Method: This intervention program was implemented on twelve married immigrant women (and another twelve women as a control group), and their self-esteem and social competence before and after the intervention were examined. In addition, the researcher kept observation journals and conducted post-program interviews with the participants after the completion of the program to understand the changes in family relationships. Result: The results of this study are as follows: (1) the self-esteem scores of participants had increased after the intervention program, however, there was not significant differences between control and experimental groups, (2) the experiment group made more progress in improving social competence, and (3) the study confirmed through qualitative analysis that the program made positive contributions to improving the participants' quality of family relationships. Conclusion: Based on these results, implications for further research and practices were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.63-77
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to develop the home economics-relevant program on Korean traditional culture for adolescents from multicultural families for them for experience it directly, set up ego-identity and improve social adaptability. Further, we checked the effectiveness and efficiency of the developed program. First we developed the program composed of a total of 12 sessions based on experiencing Korean culture. It consists of largely 5 madang(parts) centered on themes such as Eowool madang, Hangeul madang, Play madang, Cooking madang and hostory madang. We ran the developed program for 3 months targeting a total of 18 persons composed of the adolescents from multicultural families and their mothers residing in S city of eastern area of Jeonnam province. We measured the participants' ego-identity, social adaptibility and participation satisfaction to examine the effectiveness of the program. The results of pre-test, post-test and satisfaction which are evaluation instruments used in this program are as follows. First, it appeared that the self-identity of the adolescent of multicultural families inceased by 0.30 from average score of 3.03 before the participation in the program to 3.33 after the participation. Social adaptability increased by 0.30 from average 3.11 before the participation to 3.41 after the participation. Second, in the program participation satisfaction, it appeared that first the middle satisfaction marked average 3.30 which exceeded median value at 3.00, meaning a little high satisfaction, whereas the final satisfaction had an averagescore of 4.03, which means a big satisfaction concerning the program participation. The results indicated that the home economics-relevant program was effective in improving the ego-identity and social adaptability of adolescents from multicultural families and supporting a role of as a member of Korean family.

• Journal of Ethics
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• no.80
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• pp.51-77
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• 2011

This study aims to explore how to establish any foundation of the value of the unification of the Korean Peninsula in multicultural society of Korea. Its main issue is related to Korean identity of a nation and its shared value among the mulitcultural members, in particular, of North Koreans including defectors, foreign workers, and immigrants of international marriage and their children. For this study, I would utilize a given research of the application of two concepts of culture to multicultural levels by criticizing its limit; as an alternative, furthermore, I would pay attention to the possibility of the concept of emotion in multicultural members. A short feature in a given study of two conceptions of culture in a multicultural society is as follows: the first is to regard it as the patterns of meanings and symbols, which is very useful to understand others or other culture; secondly, to see it as the lasting process of perfection in human life, which makes us recognize ourselves as a member, so to speak, identity. In application it to Korean muliticultural members, however, there are crucial and complicated problems according to the cases of their lives. For North Koreans, firstly, they tend to get the conception of Korean identity in terms of ideological policies and education of North Korean government. This means that they have a strong hatred towards the word multiculture, in the level of recognizing the self-culture. Secondly, North Korean defectors also have the recognition of the self-culture, but their serious problem is discriminative treatments by South Korean in terms of socio-economics, in the process of their settlement. Thirdly, parents and their children in multicultural family can have their identity as Korean. In parents, however, the level is double that they can have both identities of Korean as well as of their countries. The foundation, therefore, of the value of the unification in the Korean Peninsula is closely related to the issue of identity as Korean. To recognize it, it is possible only to consider and reflect all members' lives by applying the dual conceptions of culture to their multicultural lives. That is not of outer system, but of inner, relational and cultural emotion, which enables them to share their common value of unification.