Penalizing 'runaway' migrant wives: commercial cross-border marriages and home space as confinement.

This study examines the use of the term 'gachul (absconding from home)' in courts and immigration policies to punish the behavior of marriage migrant women who enter South Korea after marriage and then leave their husbands. The study focuses on penalized mobility outside migrants' marital homes, which is interpreted as deviance from the expected family role. By conceptualizing home as a confinable space, the paper discusses migrant women's exclusion from citizenship based on their contribution to the family. The paper draws from cases heard in criminal courts and laws and policies, paying attention to the conflation of criminal, immigration, and family laws and the effect on marriage and family. Notably, it highlights cases of uxoricide, marital rape, and international child abduction. The cases reveal that judicial and executive bodies penalize marriage migrants' departure from home, regardless of the justification for their actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]