The peril of order? IPV, injury, and order in Mongolian families

A Tale of Two Confucian Capitals: The Role of Friends and Secrecy in Beijing and Seoul

How do your friends respond to intimate partner violence (IPV), and does it make a difference? This article examines the relationships between wives’ IPV secrecy, Confucian sex-role norms, informal social control by friends, totalitarian style partner control by husbands, and husbands’ IPV in a study of Beijing and Seoul. Hypotheses were tested using a three-stage cluster sample of 760 married/partnered women from Beijing ( n = 301) and Seoul ( n = 459). Multilevel regression models run on the combined data found that totalitarian partner control by husbands was positively associated with husband IPV severity. Friends’ protective approaches to informal social control of IPV were associated with less husband IPV severity, but punitive approaches were marginally associated with more. However, the combined findings gloss over very different findings for the two cities. The authors argue that the etiology of much IPV in Beijing is better characterized by social disorganization, but the etiology of much IPV in Seoul is better characterized by totalitarian control (deviant order).

A Multiplicative Approach to Polyvictimization: A Study of Intimate Partner Violence Types as Risk Factors for Child Polyvictimization in South Korea

Drawing on a new typology of intimate partner violence (IPV), this paper tests the relationship between indicators of totalitarian and anarchic IPV and child polyvictimization incidence and severity. The paper argues for and utilizes a quantitative approach to study polyvictimization severity. Polyvictimization is operationalized as a multiplicative relationship between physical abuse and neglect in a random sample of 204 children from Kyunggi province, South Korea. The indicator of totalitarian IPV significantly predicted polyvictimization severity and incidence even when a traditional measure of intimate terrorism was held constant. The indicator of anarchic IPV significantly predicted polyvictimization severity but not incidence when a traditional measure of intimate terrorism was held constant. Implications are discussed.

After the Escape: Physical Abuse of Offspring, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and the Legacy of Political Violence in the DPRK

What is the relationship between victimization by political violence against women in North Korea and later physical abuse of offspring? This article examines the relationships between victimization by political violence, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol abuse/dependence, and abuse of offspring after arrival in South Korea. A random sample of 204 female North Korean defectors was used to test hypotheses. An oral history conducted with a survivor of North Korean political violence is provided in an appendix to contextualize the results. Analyses established a significant link between previous victimization by political violence and abuse of offspring but not mediation by either PTSD or alcohol abuse/dependence.

Life after the pan and the fire: Depression, order, attachment, and the legacy of abuse among North Korean refugee youth and adolescent children of North Korean refugees

Given previous research on depression, history of physical abuse, family order, attachment, and parenting, we hypothesized that the physical abuse-depression relationship would be moderated by (a) family order and (b) attachment, and that (c) attachment and family order would interact significantly in predicting depression. Hypotheses were tested in South Korea in a random cluster sample of 82 youth aged 15-25 who were either themselves North Korean refugees (n=39) or who were born to North Korean refugee mothers in China (n=43). A qualitative interview was used to shed further light on the findings. Family order appears to be a protective factor against depression in that more order is associated with a weakened past abuse-depression relationship.