the poor men in korea....

From The Korea Times:

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The number of husbands beaten by their wives is increasing as domestic violence increases in general.
The men's counseling service Men Hotline Kwanju branch says the number of cases of men being beaten by their spouses is increasing, but men are reluctant to show their scars.

The hotline said it had counseled more than 820 men suffering from family violence last year. The number was 793 in 2004, and 783 in 2005.

One of the callers said his wife had beaten him several times. He confessed the only reason he is putting up with her violence is not to hurt his children's feelings, and added that he is waiting for the children to go to university and stand on their own before suing for divorce.

Another said that he was beaten for three years, but he couldn't do anything. He said he didn't want to break up the family and he thought that if his suffering was the only way to keep the couple together, he would take it.

Husband beating took place more often, and also became more vicious. The Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations surveyed 296 married men in 2005 and found that 59 suffered from verbal violence. Thirty-three experienced physical violence. Of those, five were threatened with weapons, four were strangled, and another four were sexually abused.

The reason for the violence used to be that men were unable to make sufficient money and women were not able to handle it. However, these days the reasons are more varied. As women become wage earners, their status in a family goes up and they begin expressing their complaints more aggressively.

According to the hotline, some women threw chairs, vacuum cleaners or even knives. In some cases, men were beaten with golf clubs.

However, many male victims are reluctant to report their injuries because they do not want to show their weakness. Also, the belief that men are the wrongdoers and women are the victims of domestic violence is widespread. The police estimated that a mere 3 percent of all cases are reported.

Lee Ok-yi, the director of the Korean Men hotline, said that though men might be stronger than women, they tend to endure the violence just as beaten women do.

She said that these men stand the pain for their children and to keep the family together. ``In most cases, the violence happens because there isn't much conversation between the two,'' she said, adding that the first thing a couple with a violence problem should do is to try talking to each other.