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

Abstract

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).