Noting that the rate of divorce has been on the marked increase in Korea the present paper attempted to analyze to what extent and in what way major newspapers handle "divorce" stories.
Internet accesses were made to the databases of five major newspapers published in Seoul, ''Dong-A'', "Daehan-maeil", "Chosun", "Joong-ang", and ''Hankyorae'', searching for articles, columns and stories containing the word "divorce". The search Period was one year, from Sept. 1, 1998 through Aug. 31, 1999. The electronic search produced a total of 1,072 articles.
Long articles with divorce as their main theme were found to be relatively small in number. An absolute majority of articles (754 out of 1,072) were found to be the ones in which divorce was mentioned or treated in the context of other stories.
Seventy four percent of the articles were found to be neither positive nor negative in handling divorce directly or indirectly. The proportion of stories putting divorce in a negative context was 18% as against 5% of stories handling divorce in a positive context.
Articles regarding divorce of woman (as against man) and/or the aged (as against the young) were found more likely to carry headlines containing word divorce or divorce-related words.