Features of the Role Structure and Relationships in Korean and Russian Couples

Abstract The modern world leads to collapse of the marriage institution. It causes a lot of problems. One of them raises the question of how ethnic culture preserves the relationships in married couples within traditional framework if these couples live in a different national cultural; environment. Both Russian and Korean are collectivism cultures. However, in Russia individualism is spreading very quickly among young people. In Korean families elderly people have a big influence, they adhere to Confucianism. Russians have more democratic relations and adhere to Christianity. We tried to prove that Korean couples still have traditional marital roles, relationships, and attitudes. The purpose of the study is to compare the role structure, features of the husband-wife relationship, and attitudes in the Russian and Korean married couples living in Russia. Russian and Korean family roles are considered in the article, as well as the features of family attitudes that characterize the type of family and describe the mentality of Russians and Koreans. A comparative cross-methodology was applied within pairs and between Korean and Russian pairs, and data was factorized. The sample consisted of n = 80 participants. We used the following methods: measurement of roles in a family; study of understanding relationships, emotional attraction and authoritarianism; attitudes towards love, children, money, and divorce. The scientific novelty of the research is expressed in the fact that the comparison with various aspects of the structure of roles and relationships in modern Korean and Russian couples is carried out, the members of married couples of both nationalities are compared. The study showed that Russians and Koreans living in Russia have become very similar in their lifestyle, but they differ in the internal arrangement of the family, role preferences and attitudes in a married couple, especially in relation to children, sex, psychological climate and financial responsibility. The data obtained can be used in family counseling and therapy.

and the generic essence is being lost. The Roman club calls for a balance in the relationship between men and women (von Weizsäcker & Wijkman, 2018), but it is very difficult to achieve. At the same time, according to surveys of young people in Russia, the value of the family is in the top positions among other values (Maslennikova & Nepryahina, 2019). The family is a significant value, but the content of the implementation of marriage relationships is undergoing changes. Khammatova (2012) studied the social and psychological characteristics of the Russian, Tatar and Bashkir families living in Russia. Khammatova (2012) showed that families of different ethnic groups differ in their psychological component (parental and household sphere), which determines the choice of parenting style and the formation of a psychological climate in each ethnic group. Vlasova (2020) has devoted her time to an empirical study of the ethnic characteristics of conflicts in spouses belonging to different ethnic groups on the example of the Russians, Armenians, and Tatars and mixed couples. She found out that Russian couples are the most conflicted.
As the researchers show, married couples of the collectivist culture are more likely to accept conceptually-oriented communication, whereas married couples of collectivist cultures tend to use socially-oriented communication (Singh & Nayak, 2016).
According to many researchers in the field of family relations, one of the main problems of the role structure of the family is inter-ethnic differences among all peoples in the world. Culture and mentality are reflected in the internal style of life of the family.
The problem of the relationship between the ethnic group and the family structure is relevant due to the presence of many different nationalities in Russia, whose ethnopsychological features have not yet been sufficiently studied. In Russian studies, Korean couples are rarely researched.
Russia is a multinational state. Here married couples are subject to serious changes due to modern trends in the destruction of the family institution.
Today when the world has changed greatly we would like to understand what will hold back traditional forms of relationships in married couples, and whether globalism has affected them so much (Chang & Kim, 2018;Han et al., 2019;Jaehn, Bobrova, Saburova, & Cook, 2020;Lee, Park, Ju, & Kim, 2018). There is an assumption that ethnic culture keeps relations in married couples within the traditional framework, if they live in a different national cultural environment. As part of our research, we studied Russian and Korean couples living in the South of Russia. Russian and Korean cultures belong to collectivism (Triandis, 2004). But in Russia, individualism is spreading very actively among young people. As Oyserman (2011) noted, the situation can change the collectivistic orientation. However, in Korean families, older people have more influence, relationships are arranged hierarchically, and they adhere to Confucianism. Russians have more democratic relations, sometimes they show disdain for their elders and adhere to Christianity.
The family is an indicator of the well-being of society, stabilization and elimination of tension. This is why it is so important to study relationships in married couples.
Our research was conducted with the aim to compare the role structure, features of the husband-wife relationship, and attitudes in the Russian and Korean married couples living in Russia. We assumed that Korean Role Structure and Relationships in Korean and Russian Couples couples, despite the fact that they all live in the same Russian space, will show more collectivistic, traditional role distributions, relationships and attitudes.
Based on the presented problem, we put forward several research hypotheses: H1. The role structure in Korean couples is more traditional and collectivistic than in Russian couples. H2. Interpersonal relationships between husband and wife in Korean couples are more traditional, collectivistic compared to Russian couples.
H3. Korean couples have more traditional and collectivistic attitudes than Russian couples.

Method Participants
Initially, we involved 30 Russian and 28 Korean married couples in the study. But in the course of the study, some of the pairs were eliminated.
The empirical object was 20 Russian and 20 Korean married couples (officially registered, traditional, heterosexual) aged between 22 and 38 years (M = 30, SD = 13.4), a husband and a wife who work, have 1-2 children, Russian couples adhere to the Orthodox religion, Korean couples adhere to Confucianism, and all married couples live in Rostov-on-Don, the southern region of Russia. All couples live separately from their parents and speak Russian. There were no nationally mixed pairs. In Russian and Korean couples, husbands and wives are married from 2 to 19 years.
The method of "Distribution of roles in the family" identifies the following roles: 1) Parenting-questions; 2) The emotional climate in the family (the role of the family "psychotherapist"); 3) Material support for the family; 4) Organization of entertainment; 5) The role of "host," "hostess"; 6) Sexual partner; 7) Organization of family subculture. The indexes for each area are calculated as the arithmetic average of the three questions. The higher the score, the more this role in the surveyed family is realized by the wife, the lower-the more realized by the husband. If the value is close to the average value, then this role is implemented by both spouses approximately equally. Since both spouses participate in the survey, it is possible not only to find out the opinion of each of them about the distribution of roles in the family, but also to compare their responses to the proposed questions. Misalignment of the positions of the spouses in assessing the distribution of roles in the family can be an indicator of conflict points (explicit or hidden) in the relationship between them.
The "Understanding, emotional attraction, authority" questionnaire was designed to measure the degree of understanding, emotional attractiveness, and respect for partners in a marriage. The questionnaire consists of 45 statements that relate to the relationship between partners in marriage. The text of the questionnaire contains three scales reflected in the name of the method: understanding, emotional attraction, and authority (respect). Each scale includes 15 questions-statements. Understanding (1-15 statements) is the presence of a picture of the partner's personality in the subject, a subjective sense of knowledge of his personal characteristics. The subject who notes a high understanding is not difficult to interpret the behavior, thoughts, feelings and intentions of the partner, and can easily take them into account when communicating with the partner. Misunderstanding-lack of a clear picture of the partner's personality, difficulties in interpreting and explaining his thoughts, feelings, and actions. Emotional attraction is the attractiveness of the partner, the desire to communicate with him, to deal with him, the therapeutic effect of contact on the subject. Low ratings on this scale characterize difficulties in communication between partners, a feeling of fatigue from each other. Authority (respect) is an indicator of how much the partner is accepted as a person, how much the subject shares his worldview, interests, opinions and accepts them as a standard. Disrespect-contempt for the partner as a person. The sum of points within a single scale is a numerical measure of the measured parameter. Thus, the method allows us to define the measure of understanding, attractiveness and respect on a scale of 0-30 points, where 0 is the minimum and 30 are the maximum points on the scale.
The questionnaire "Measuring attitudes in a married couple" is designed to study the attitudes of spouses on the most important areas of human life in family interaction, to determine the degree of socio-psychological compatibility of partners in marriage. When creating the questionnaire, the authors were guided by ideas about which attitudes of a person can have the most powerful influence on their intra-family relations. The questionnaire consists of 40 judgments that express a particular position on 10 different areas that are important to people: 1) attitude to people; 2) alternative between a sense of duty and pleasure; 3) attitude to children; 4) attitude to the autonomy or dependence of the spouses; 5) attitude to divorce; 6) attitude to romantic love; 7) assessment of the importance of the sexual sphere in family life; 8) attitude to the "taboo of sex"; 9) attitude to the patriarchal or egalitarian structure of the family; 10) attitude to money. For each scale, the arithmetic mean of the four responses is calculated; the alternatives are assigned the following values: 4 (yes, it is), 3 (probably it is), 2 (unlikely it is), 1 (no, it is not).
The following methods of statistical analysis were also used for calculating and comparing data: the Kruskal-Wallis criterion, the Jonkheer-Terpster criterion of ordered alternatives, and factor analysis.

Procedure
The first stage involved the search and selection of volunteers for the study. Subjects suitable for this research are those people who are married. Both spouses must belong to either Korean or Russian nationality. International families are not subject to research. The social network Vkontakte was used to search for potential test subjects, since there are many communities in It, including those that are nationally oriented. In it, I published an entry with brief information about me, about the upcoming research, and requirements for those who wish to participate. It was from the Vkontakte community that the majority of people from the sample of Korean subjects responded. In addition to social networks, I used the opportunity to contact the family center, where there were those who wanted to participate in the study. All the people found were in the age category from 22 to 45, the total number is 80 people.

Role Structure and Relationships in Korean and Russian Couples
The subjects were asked to fill out forms of techniques. The subjects were interested in testing because they were promised feedback in the form of a detailed interpretation of their results. Due to the tight work schedule of the subjects, a week (7 days) was given for completing the questionnaires.
The second stage is the processing of all the obtained material that was obtained during the research. The methods were processed by calculating points and comparing them with the key. After that, all the data was entered in the Excel table, to clarify the results, as well as for further analysis.
The third stage consisted of drawing up graphs to show the results. After compiling the Excel table, data was processed using the statistical program SPSS (Version 22) for Windows. And it was used to identify which scales and groups differ and what these differences are, as well as to factorize the data. Based on this, the relevant conclusions were drawn.

Results
First, we determined the structure of role-playing in pairs. The following roles were defined: parenting, emotional climate, material support, organization of entertainment, the role of host/hostess, sexual partner, organization of family subculture. The results are shown in Table 1 and Table 2.  There were no differences in the roles between the groups of husbands and wives in the Russian and Korean samples. However, differences were found between the groups of the two nationalities. There were differences between groups of husbands on the roles of organization of family subculture (U = 68.0, Asymptotic  Table 3 and Table 4.  Differences in the relationships of intra-family couples were not found. Differences between the Korean and Russian husbands were not found on these scales. There were no differences between the wives of the Russian and Korean couples.

Role Structure and Relationships in Korean and Russian Couples
The results of the questionnaire "Measuring the levels of understanding, emotional attraction and authority" are shown in Table 3 and Table 4. All the surveyed couples demonstrated a sufficiently high level of understanding, emotional attraction and respect, which makes it possible to characterize the relationship of the spouses as prosperous.
As we can see, in Russian couples, the understanding, emotional attractiveness and respect of the husband and wife are at a high level, on equal approach. In Korean couples, there is the same trend, but husband's authority is higher. This confirms the hypothesis of tradition character in the relations of Korean couples. The H2 hypothesis was partially confirmed. Table 5 and Table 6 shows the distribution by attitudes. In the Russian couple, a significant difference was found on the scale "Evaluating the value of the sexual sphere" (U = 18, Asymptotic p = .015) and "Attitude to the autonomy or dependence of the spouses" (U = 14, Asymptotic p = .010). There is a predominance in men.
In Korean couples, there are differences between husband and wife in the attitude "Sense of duty/pleasure" (U = 85.5, Asymptotic p = .009), "Attitude to the autonomy or dependence of the spouses" (U = 15.5, Asymptotic p = .013) and "Attitude to divorce" (U = 20.5, Asymptotic p = .023). In Russian couple men strive for autonomy and in Korean women strive for autonomy.  Comparing the men of the Korean and Russian groups, it was found out that there are differences in the scale "Evaluating the value of the sexual sphere" (U = 85, Asymptotic p = .007), "Sense of duty/pleasure" (U = 12, Asymptotic p = .003).
The wives of Korean and Russian groups showed that there are differences on the scale "Evaluating the value of the sexual sphere" (U = 76.5, Asymptotic p = .043). The H3 hypothesis was partially confirmed.
To identify the relationship factors in couples, we factorized the data (using the principal component method).
Component 6 "Sex in a couple"-"Attitude to the prohibition of sex" (0.67).
There were no significant variables in Component 8.

Discussion
Our study showed that there were no differences in role preferences between the groups of husbands and wives in the Russian and Korean samples. This may mean that both in Russian and Korean couples, there is a clear functional distribution of roles between husband and wife, and there is no mixing of roles, role conflict. However, in the diagram (Table 1 and Table 2), we see some discrepancies in the group of Russian couples on the role of the emotional climate and material support of the family. We assume that these are the most problematic areas in family relationships. This is confirmed in other studies of the authors (Romanova & Tsinchenko, 2019;Spivatchuk, 2017;Vlasova, 2020).
Korean subjects scored more points when evaluating the roles of parenting and emotional climate, which means that they prefer to assign these roles to a woman, and the role of responsibility for financial support to a man. That is, the higher the score, the more this or that role is assigned to a woman. The lower the score, the more this role is assigned to a man. We can assume that the way of Korean married couples is traditional, patriarchal, which confirmed the hypothesis H1. This is confirmed in the study of Ushakov (Ushakova & Hugh, 2007). The responses of the Russian subjects indicate an even distribution of roles between the spouses. This may indicate that Russian couples are predominantly egalitarian. This is confirmed by the research (Ivanova & Ustinova, 2016;Spivatchuk, 2017).
There were also some specific features in relationships in couples. In Korean couples, the husband has more authority. Understanding and emotional appeal were revealed in all couples. The similar result can be found in the work (Delelis & Heuschena, 2019;Han et al., 2019). In Russian couples, the role of maintaining the emotional climate is played by the husband, and in Korean couples, this role is played by the wife. The hypothesis Н2 was confirmed again.
The results of the family attitudes survey show differences between groups in the following attitudes: attitudes towards children, attitudes towards divorce, and attitudes towards the taboo of sex. The Russian subjects rated these attitudes significantly lower. This means that the Russians are ready to build families that will lack an educational function, in other words, they often choose to live without children. Furthermore, Russian families are more loyal to divorce, not regarding it as a threat to marriage, and the topic of sexual relations is not forbidden for them. In other words, the higher the score, the more clearly the attitude to any setting is shown. This is confirmed in a number of studies (Andreeva, 2005 ;Romanova & Tsinchnko, 2019).
As we can see, there are significant differences in attitudes to children, attitudes to divorce, and attitudes to the prohibition of sex. Korean families adhere to more conservative attitudes that set strict limits and prohibit families from divorcing, openly discussing sexual relationships, and prioritize families with children. Perhaps that's why Korean women are more focused on autonomy than Russian women. This corresponds to the general global trends (Gressel, Rashed, Maciuika, & Bhavani, 2020) Psychological characteristics of Russians are characterized by openness and flexibility in making decisions, forming new relationships, and so on.
Factor analysis allowed us to construct a hypothetical relationship construct in the Russian couples, including family relationships, roles, educational positions and emotional relationships. In Korean couples, the relation-ship construct includes: family spheres, sexual relations, family budget, responsibility in a couple, attitude to people. If to expand the sample and add mixed couples it could increase the evidence for some hypotheses.

Conclusion
According to the conducted research we came to the following conclusions: the Russians and Koreans living in Russia do not differ much from each other due to the adaptation of Korean immigrants to the Russian culture and mentality. However, the Korean mentality does not disappear and manifests itself in family relationships.
Compared to Russians, Koreans are more conservative people. Family and maintaining strong family ties are very important for Koreans. The birth of children for Koreans is the main goal of a married couple.
In matters relating to parenting and financial support the Russians and the Koreans act differently. Russian spouses share their responsibilities more or less equally. They try to raise a child equally, earn money and provide for their family. In the Korean family, the picture is different. Here the household chores and upbringing of the child is mainly on the shoulders of women, men in turn take on the role of a breadwinner who provides his family with material goods. These were differences related to the distribution of life.
The last group of differences is related to the attitudes and beliefs of the individual. There are two areas that people of different nationalities think differently about. This is the attitude to children and the assessment of the prohibition of sex. The study has practical significance, which is expressed in the applicability of knowledge in the field of interethnic psychological characteristics in counseling, family and couple therapy, opens the possibility of a more objective interpretation of people's behavior, as the spectrum of their ethnicity is added.

Funding
The authors have no funding to report.