Working with Korean-American Families: Multicultural Hermeneutics in Understanding and Dealing with Marital Domestic Violence

Abstract

Multicultural hermeneutics is introduced as a method of understanding and dealing with marital domestic violence. The brief review of literature covers four categories of hermeneutic tradition: (1) philosophical hermeneutics, (2) psychological hermeneutics, (3) narrative hermeneutics, and (4) multicultural hermeneutics. This paper proposes that multiple perspectives or an interdisciplinary scheme of hermeneutics help to understand the central issues of marital domestic violence. Korean women are vulnerable to Hwabyung (an anger syndrome), in the patriarchal and oppressive family context. Korean-American families are experiencing a certain degree of acculturation stress in transition as well as intergenerational conflict between first and second generations due to explicit and implicit cultural differences in the United States. One Korean-American family case is presented to show how marital domestic violence can be evaluated and treated better from the perspective of multicultural hermeneutics. A number of recommendations are also suggested to change the social and political context in which marital domestic violence occurs.