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'Within 6th Cousins Appropriate' 15%

As the government considers reducing the prohibited range of marriage between relatives from within the 8th degree to within the 4th degree, controversy continues, with three out of four citizens believing that maintaining the current range is appropriate.

On the 11th, the Ministry of Justice announced that, according to a telephone interview survey conducted from November 28 to December 6 last year with 1,300 adults nationwide, 75% of respondents answered that the prohibited range of consanguineous marriage should remain "within the current 8th degree." Responses indicating that "within the 6th degree" is appropriate accounted for 15%, and those saying "within the 4th degree" accounted for 5%. Regarding whether the prohibition on consanguineous marriage restricts freedom of marriage, 74% responded "No," while 24% responded "Yes."

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The controversy ignited when it became known that the government is considering reducing the prohibited range of marriage between relatives from the existing 8th degree to the 4th degree. In 2022, the Constitutional Court (Heonjae) ruled the Civil Code Article 815, which uniformly invalidates marriages between blood relatives within the 8th degree, as unconstitutional. Currently, Article 809, Paragraph 1 of the Civil Code prohibits marriage between blood relatives within the 8th degree, and Article 815, Item 2 declares such marriages null and void. The Constitutional Court viewed Article 815, Item 2 as violating the principle of proportionality. It stated that uniformly nullifying even already established marriages could lead to results contrary to the original legislative intent.

The Constitutional Court recommended legal revision by December 2024, and the Ministry of Justice commissioned a research project to study the prohibited range of marriage. Subsequently, Professor Hyun So-hye of Sungkyunkwan University Law School, who was entrusted with the research, proposed reducing the prohibited range to blood relatives within the 4th degree. The reasons included that the sense of familial bonds significantly decreases beyond the 5th degree and that there is no correlation between consanguineous marriage and the incidence of genetic diseases.

However, Sungkyunkwan University and the Confucian community (Yurim) have opposed the proposal, arguing that existing family relationships could be dismantled. On the 6th, Sungkyunkwan issued a statement warning, "If family relationships collapse, marriages could occur even between the 5th degree relatives, eventually leading to marriages within the 4th degree, which is an absurd situation." They added, "If the standards for consanguineous marriage are changed to attempt a radical transformation of marriage culture, family relationships, which are already as fragile as a flickering flame, will be dismantled, and morality will completely collapse."

Meanwhile, amid the controversy over the research results, the Ministry of Justice stated, "No direction for revision has been decided."