Will Abolishing the Paternal Surname Priority Principle Spark Another Gender Conflict?

Son, Sook-mee

Chairperson, Gender Equality Committee

Hansun Foundation

<Table of Contents>

1. Changes to Article 781(1) of the Civil Act and the Legitimacy of the Proposed Revision

2. The Realistic Structure and Dynamics Behind Concerns over Gender Conflict in Korean Society

3. Wisdom from Abroad: Practical and Cultural Solutions That Buffer Conflict

4. Korea’s Institutional Deficiencies and the Preconditions for Successful Implementation

A person’s surname and given name are more than a simple signifier. They are legal and emotional markers that represent the roots of the community to which an individual belongs, as well as one’s cultural identity. In Korean society in particular, the practice of children inheriting their father’s surname has long served as a deeply entrenched foundation maintained over thousands of years. However, as the concept of family has been rapidly redefined in modern society and demands for gender equality have grown stronger, this patrilineal principle of surname succession is now facing a major turning point. The abolition of the “paternal surname priority principle,” once a longstanding pillar of Korea’s Civil Act, has now entered the legislative process in earnest.

The proposed revision of the Civil Act, pursued in the name of gender equality and diversity, clearly carries both rationality and legitimacy in that it seeks to realize gender equality and embrace new forms of family. Yet the justice of a system’s purpose does not, by itself, guarantee success in reality. Korean society today remains caught in an intense whirlwind of gender conflict, while the younger generation continues to weigh marriage and childbirth in terms of gains and losses. A sudden institutional change introduced without structural buffers to absorb conflict may threaten an already fragile marriage market and become yet another major source of social division.

1. Changes to Article 781(1) of the Civil Act and the Legitimacy of the Proposed Revision

Recently, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family finalized the “5th Basic Plan for Healthy Families (2026?2030)” after deliberation by the State Council. The plan effectively abolishes the paternal surname priority principle stipulated in Article 781(1) of the Civil Act. Having passed the final administrative stage, the plan, once enacted through a subsequent revision of the Civil Act by the National Assembly, would allow parents to freely choose, by mutual agreement, whether their child will inherit the father’s surname or the mother’s surname at birth.

Currently, Article 781(1) of the Civil Act of the Republic of Korea provides as follows: “A child shall take the surname and family origin of the father. However, if the parents agree at the time of marriage registration that the child shall take the surname and family origin of the mother, the child shall take the surname and family origin of the mother.” From the perspective of gender equality, the current law, which places the father first from the moment of birth, is at odds with the modern constitutional value that parents form a family on the basis of equal rights and responsibilities. Granting parents autonomy in choosing a child’s surname at the time of birth registration is a highly reasonable measure in that it removes the customary remnants of patriarchy and opens the way toward an era of parental equality.

In particular, when considering families headed by unmarried mothers, single-parent families, and remarried families after divorce, this legal revision is an urgent task from the perspective of social human rights and welfare. In order to warmly embrace, within the institutional framework, the diverse forms of family that society must include and protect, the abolition of the paternal surname principle and the expansion of parental choice clearly represent a meaningful step forward from a human rights perspective.

2. The Realistic Structure and Dynamics Behind Concerns over Gender Conflict in Korean Society

Although the purpose of the system is noble and its value-based legitimacy is clear, many are concerned that, within the marriage culture and emotional landscape faced by Koreans in their 20s and 30s, it could trigger a serious eruption of gender conflict. This is because our society has not yet prepared the emotional and institutional buffers needed to smoothly accept such a major shift in values.

The most fundamental source of conflict lies in a real-world asymmetry: “material responsibility in the marriage market is still demanded according to traditional patriarchal norms, while rights and symbolic status within the family are demanded according to thoroughly Western-style egalitarianism.” In Korea’s marriage market today, men are still strongly expected to serve as the primary bearers of economic responsibility, including the provision of housing. Young men, who already carry the psychological burden of compulsory military service borne exclusively by men and the heavy costs of marriage, have unconsciously internalized a traditional compensation structure: building one’s own family and passing down family identity to one’s children through one’s surname.

However, if the heavy responsibilities of economic contribution and family support remain with men as traditional heads of household, while only the paternal surname principle the symbolic right of patriarchy is cut away in the name of equality, young men may inevitably feel a serious sense of emotional resistance and deprivation. This backlash arising from the asymmetry between costs and rights may lead the younger generation to perceive marriage itself as a major loss and risk, producing the side effect of blocking entry into the marriage market altogether through non-marriage.

This conflict is especially likely to function as a time bomb at the moment of childbirth in so-called homogamous marriages, where educational background, assets, and income are similar. Immediately after a child is born, the wife’s emotional power within the family is at its peak. Seeing his wife, who carried the child for ten months and risked her life to give birth, the husband feels profound gratitude, guilt, and a sense of indebtedness, leaving him psychologically at his most vulnerable.

If, at that moment, a woman with a strong sense of compensatory entitlement insists forcefully that the child should take the mother’s surname, saying, “I suffered to give birth to this child, so giving the child my surname is gender equality,” and advances only an ideological justification, the husband may face an overwhelming sense of deprivation and alienation, as though driven into a corner. From the husband’s perspective, even if he has borne an equal or greater share of housing costs and economic responsibility, he may feel wounded as though his very presence has been denied. Yet because the child has already been born, the opportunity cost of divorce is so severe that it is realistically difficult to file for divorce. This may later operate as a latent cause of divorce whenever childcare disputes or economic crises arise, eroding the family from within. In the worst paradox, the good intentions of the system may end up accelerating family breakdown.

3. Wisdom from Abroad: Practical and Cultural Solutions That Buffer Conflict

1) The United States and the Anglosphere: Coexistence of Both Families’ Surnames Through the Middle Name

In the United States and other English-speaking countries, the tradition of married couples sharing the same surname remains strong, and around 80 percent of women change their surname to their husband’s after marriage, though some women retain their own surname. When they wish to pass on both the mother’s and father’s identities to their children, the most practical method is to use the mother’s maiden name as the child’s middle name.

For example, Chelsea Clinton’s full legal name is “Chelsea Rodham Clinton.” The legal last name remains “Clinton,” her father’s surname, thereby respecting convention and avoiding disruption to administrative data systems, while her mother’s surname, “Rodham,” is officially preserved in the middle of her name. Thanks to this buffer, families in the Anglosphere can achieve a peaceful compromise that preserves the pride and roots of both families, rather than engaging in an extreme chicken game in which either the father’s surname is erased or the mother’s surname is abandoned.

2) France: Equal Combination Through the Double-Barrelled Name

France fully abolished the paternal surname principle in 2005 and allowed children to receive not only the father’s surname or the mother’s surname, but also a double-barrelled surname combining both parents’ surnames side by side. When couples reach an impasse over a child’s surname, the law itself provides a compromise in the form of equal solidarity between the two surnames, rather than humiliating one side with total defeat.

What is noteworthy is that even under this complete legal freedom, according to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, or INSEE, about 80 percent of families still follow custom and pass down only the father’s surname, while about 14 percent use a combination of both parents’ surnames. In France, where the share of births outside marriage exceeds 60 percent and the civil partnership system known as PACS is well established, it is natural for spouses to have different surnames, and the level of gender conflict is relatively low. There exists a mature cultural foundation in which a woman’s request to use her own surname is not perceived as an ideological weapon intended to attack men.

3) Japan: A Practical Exchange Under the Traditional Japanese Ie (家) Family System and the Mukoyoshi Tradition

Japan legally maintains a system requiring married couples to use the same surname, but exceptional cases in which the husband takes the wife’s family name, accounting for about 4 to 5 percent, are naturally accepted. This is possible thanks to the thoroughly practical mechanism of the mukoyoshi, or adopted son-in-law, tradition. When the wife’s family possesses substantial assets or needs to continue a traditional family business, such as a family of traditional artisans or a mid-sized company, the man accepts the choice of giving up his own surname and taking the wife’s family name. Because a clear practical exchange is established family identity in return for substantial economic assets and status there is no emotional war of attrition or catastrophic family breakdown.

4. Korea’s Institutional Deficiencies and the Preconditions for Successful Implementation

The key lesson from advanced countries is clear. If a system is to establish autonomy without generating conflict, it must be accompanied by cultural customs or legal mechanisms that can buffer that conflict. Yet Korea is currently pressing the accelerator on legal revision without any such buffer zone in place. In order for the abolition of the paternal surname priority principle to take root as a noble value of gender equality, the following three preconditions, reflecting the particular circumstances of Korean society, must be prepared in advance at the legal and administrative levels.

First, an administrative legal buffer space equivalent to a middle name should be introduced.

Korea currently has a strict single-surname system. Because there is no middle ground, any attempt to include even a small part of the mother’s identity in a child’s name requires completely erasing the father’s surname. Conversely, preserving the father’s surname means completely removing the mother’s surname. This forces an extreme confrontation.

Instead of adopting a double-barrelled surname system that could disrupt administrative data systems and cause confusion, Korea should create an administrative buffer space that allows the mother’s surname to be officially listed in the child’s family relations register and resident registration forms in a middle-name-like format. If the legal surname format is maintained as a single paternal surname in order to respect administrative stability and tradition, while parents are given the option of officially placing the mother’s surname in the middle of the child’s name, this would provide ordinary couples with an excellent way out of all-out conflict at the birth registration stage.

Second, the legal effect of prenuptial agreements should be clearly recognized.

It is an extremely harsh and risky idea to encourage couples to decide such a major issue of values as a child’s surname immediately after childbirth, when emotions are at their highest and the dynamics between spouses are extremely asymmetrical. As in Western countries, Korea must first establish a prenuptial agreement system under which couples, before marriage and in a rational and calm state of mind, can agree in advance on matters such as property division, household labor, and the method of determining the surnames of future children, and have such written agreements fully recognized as legally effective.

Third, emotional balance should be achieved in the sharing of social responsibility and gender awareness.

For the system to function without side effects, emotional acceptance among the younger generation must be secured. In order to resolve the contradiction of “traditional responsibility but equal rights,” there must be calm and substantive discussion of the balance between men’s and women’s rights and obligations in areas such as the excessive economic support burden placed only on men, the practice of leaving men solely responsible for securing housing, and social compensation for military service.

At the same time, women’s groups and ideological camps that hold discursive leadership should refrain from treating the approval of this system as a political trophy won against patriarchy or as an ideological weapon to subdue men. True equality does not blossom from a value war that erases the other person’s identity, but only from mutual respect that recognizes each other’s differences and contributions.

The abolition of the paternal surname priority principle under Article 781(1) of the Civil Act is an irreversible trend of the times. It is a proper milestone toward which Korea should move in order to realize the value of gender equality and legally embrace various warm forms of family that have long been marginalized, including families headed by unmarried mothers. There can be no doubt whatsoever about the human rights rationale and legitimacy of the system.

However, no matter how noble and beautiful a law may be, if the social buffers and emotional trust among members of society needed to accommodate it are absent, it may become a sharp weapon inside real families and instead weaken the bond between spouses. Without buffers such as Japan’s practical compromise or the middle name system of the Anglosphere, rushing to amend legal provisions merely to seize a political moment would be a mistake that drives otherwise peaceful couples into an extreme, no-way-out chicken game over values.

The government and legislature must move beyond an administratively convenient attitude of simply amending statutory language and boasting of achievement. They must first gather wisdom to prepare legal and institutional safeguards that can carefully weave a protective net to soothe the subtle fractures in family power dynamics and the sense of deprivation felt by young men. Precisely because there is deep sympathy for the rationality of the direction, Korea’s legal system must now maturely prepare so that the process of implementation becomes not a painful path of conflict and breakdown, but a warm journey toward coexistence and integration.

This article may differ from the views of the Hansun Foundation

(※ It's a translation based on machine translation)