Marriage Immigrant Women in Korea: Their Health Management and Health Literacy

Abstract

Marriage immigrant women, a chief segment of Korea’s migrant population, continue to grow in number, with their countries of origin also becoming more diverse. Drawing on a health survey conducted in 2024 of 519 marriage immigrant women aged 19-64 from China and Vietnam, this article assesses the current state of their health management in terms of health behaviors and healthcare use. The prevalence rates of smoking and high-risk drinking were relatively low at 0.6 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. An estimated 65.3 percent reported doing physical exercise on a regular basis. Healthcare utilization rates were found to be rather low: 54.0 percent reported having visited healthcare providers such as hospitals, clinics, dentists, and public health centers in the year preceding the survey; 62.2 percent had received a health checkup in the two years preceding it. About 17 percent of those surveyed had low health literacy, a group characterized by a lack of regular physical exercise and high healthcare utilization and thus regarded as at risk for health issues due to limited health literacy.