Old Korean Wedding Etiquette

Public Domain image of young Korean couple playing board game, circa 1910 -1920

Folks Make the Match and the Principals Do Not Meet Till Ceremony

The marriage customs of Korea are peculiar. Parents and friends arrange the match, in accordance with their own interests, and without consulting the parties most concerned. The wedding is accompanied with few formalities, Early in the morning, the best man arrives to tie the bridegroom's pigtail in a knot on the top of his head, and this not only remains forever as an outward and visible sign of his condition, but entitles him to he treated as a man and to enter public life. 

He may be a child of 10, but he may no longer play with his friends and he must choose his associates among old men —octogenarians even. He has all civil rights and is expected to behave accordingly. If he is unable to afford the luxury of wife and children, he must continue to extreme old age wearing his pigtail down his back, renouncing all the advantages of citizenship and playing with kid’s and marbles. Any folly he may commit is excused on account of non-age, just as in the case of a naughty baby. 

The wedding consists simply of a procession, when bride and bridegroom are conducted by their respective relatives to a dais. There they are set face to face. Now for the first time they see each other. The mutual surprise is sometimes very disagreeable. But it is the height of bad taste to show any emotion. 

The young couple bow without a word being spoken, and a few minutes afterward the bride is conducted to her home, where she is cloistered forever. Social etiquette demands that the bridegroom shall return to the company of his bachelor friends for a few days which are passed in festivities that sometimes degenerate into orgies. 

A honeymoon is unknown, wedding trips unheard of. The young wife becomes a head servant to her mother-in-law and no visible change is introduced. — King City Rustler, 1907

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