Korean women's experience of child abuse and its relationship with interpersonal functioning

The purpose of this study was to examine Korean college women's experience of child sexual, physical and psychological abuse, and how their child abuse experiences are related to their adult trauma symptoms and intimate relationship functioning.;Three hundred twenty-five female undergraduate students of a university in Seoul, Korea, completed self-report questionnaires in a group setting. The questionnaires included measures to evaluate child abuse experiences, adult symptoms, fear of intimacy, and quality of intimate relationships. The author of this study translated all the measures that were originally created in English by various authors.;Women reporting child sexual and/or physical abuse reported more severe child psychological abuse compared to women reporting no sexual/physical abuse. Women reporting multiple types of child abuse reported more severe trauma symptoms and greater fear of intimacy, compared to women reporting no abuse or a single type of abuse.;Regression analyses revealed that more severe child abuse predicted more severe symptoms. The severity of child abuse was a significant predictor of greater fear of intimacy and lower quality of intimate relationships. Subsequent hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that after entering trauma symptoms into the model where existing predictors were the three types of child abuse, only trauma symptoms remained a significant predictor of fear of intimacy and quality of intimate relationships. These results from the regression analyses, and the fact that child abuse occurred prior to trauma symptoms and adult intimacy functioning, led to the conclusion that trauma symptoms mediate the relationships between child abuse and intimacy functioning.;Although the findings from this study were generally consistent with those of Western studies that used similar or same measures as in this study, the negative effect of child abuse on interpersonal functioning didn't appear extremely strong. The collectivist culture in Korea may have provided the survivors with various opportunities to experience and learn close relationships, which could mitigate the negative effect of child abuse.