South Korea

There is no publicly available government data on child marriage in South Korea.

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is limited information on child marriage in South Korea, but reports suggests that child marriage could be driven by:

● Trafficking: An increasing number of South Korean men are marrying foreign women. As reported by the 2019, 2021 and 2023 United States Trafficking in Persons Report, some of these women are recruited and trafficked from China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia through marriage brokers. However, there is no data available on whether this includes girls under the age of 18. In 2023, the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA), prosecuted 161 defendants and convicted 149 under the Child Welfare Act, some of which included child sex trafficking cases.

South Korea has committed to ending child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

During its Voluntary National Review at the 2016 High Level Political Forum, the government highlighted that girls who receive a quality education are more likely to delay marriage and childbirth.

The government has not submitted a Voluntary National Review in any High Level Political Forum since 2016.

South Korea co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage, the 2021 resolution on child, early and forced marriage in times of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 resolution on ending and preventing forced marriage. In 2014, South Korea also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

South Korea co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

South Korea ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted to recommend the establishment of a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1984, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2019 concluding observation, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern at the increasing rate of child marriage amongst the migrant community in South Korea. The Committee urged the government to prohibit child marriages without exception and to cooperate with the countries of origin to establish access to a civil registration system procedure to eliminate the practice of child marriage.

South Korea is becoming increasingly engaged in advocating against child marriage, through the “Better Life for Girls” five-year $200 million (USD) project. In 2017, the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) identified areas where it could increase programming in developing countries specifically to target child marriage prevention and response, which include:

$1.5 million USD towards increasing access to education for 3,300 out-of-school girls in Sierra Leone, in collaboration with ChildFund (April 2023 – December 2025). This project is carried out in 6 schools in the Western Urban and Rural Districts, with the support of the Community Teachers’ Association, Patent Teachers’ Association, School Management Committees and the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education. The project aims to construct school facilities, strengthen teachers’ capacities, provide teaching aids and materials, conduct training on school-based violence prevention, provide psychosocial and mentoring support for out-of-school girls who may face traumatic or psychosocial difficulties and provide childcare to assist adolescent mothers.

$450 million USD towards realizing gender equality and promoting self-reliance by supporting economic activities for vulnerable women in Haiti (2018-2024), in collaboration with UNDP.

$550 million USD towards promoting gender equality through preventing child marriage and violence against women and girls in the Dominican Republic (2022-2025), in collaboration with UNICEF. This project is carried out in 5 provinces: Santo Domingo, San Cristóbal, Barahona, Santiago and La Altagarcia.

$550 million USD towards promoting gender equality and non-discrimination in the local communities of Haina and Monto Cristi and to promote the economic inclusion of women (2020-2026), in collaboration with Supérate.

$4 million USD towards preventing adolescent pregnancy and improving sexual and reproductive health education in the Dominican Republic (2018-2022).

$5 million USD towards girls’ education in Uganda in 2016. This education placed emphasis on educating girls on the harms of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy as well as educating men and parents/guardians.

$500,000 USD towards the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to set up technical and vocational training for refugee women.

$5 million USD – in collaboration with UNICEF Ghana in May 2017, several programmes were implemented to address sexual and gender-based violence as well as child marriage and adolescent pregnancy. These programmes ran from May 2017 to March 2021 and covered Northern, Savannah, North-East, Oti and Volta regions of Ghana.

In South Korea, the legal age of marriage is 18 years with no exceptions.

Under Article 807 of the Civil Code 2011 the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years. The age of majority in South Korea is 19 years old, therefore if a person aged 18 wants to marry, they require parental/guardian consent.