Dwindling Marriages Lead to Fewer Divorces

An average of 189 couples got married and 55 got divorced every day in Seoul last year. Divorces are on the wane only because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

In 1971, there were only 3,787 divorces in the capital, according to statistics, but they rose steadily until a peak of 32,499 in 2003.

The numbers then started to dwindle to 21,768 in 2010 as the married population declined.

The number of marriages has plummeted since it peaked at 108,370 in 1991.

The peak marriage rate in the early 1990s led to the peak in divorces in the early 2000s, because divorce becomes more likely after 10 years of marriage.

The rate of divorces per 10 married couples was 0.8 in 1971, rising to 4.5 in 2003 but dropping to three in 2013.

By age, divorces happen most often among men aged 45 to 49 and among women aged 40 to 44. Last year, 0.91 percent of those men and 0.88 percent of those women got divorced.