Trauma Experiences of Multicultural Families in South Korea: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

This study explores the characteristics and types of trauma experienced by multicultural families in South Korea through qualitative integrative analysis. Thematic analysis and qualitative synthesis was conducted on 55 academic papers published from 2013 to 2025. The results categorized trauma into five types: ① socio-cultural, ② linguistic, ③ identity-related, ④ familial-relational, and ⑤ institutional trauma. These traumas manifested as ‘life-based trauma’ accumulated through daily experiences, showing intergenerational transmission characteristics. Korea's Confucian familialism and homogeneity norms structurally contribute to trauma formation. The discussion identified “language-emotion regulation failure” as the core mechanism and integrated Berry's acculturation theory and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. Based on this, intervention strategies such as bilingual emotion expression training and emotion-focused psychological coaching-based family counseling were proposed. This study reconceptualized multicultural family trauma as a complex traumatic phenomenon and presented integrated intervention directions in psychology, counseling, and policy fields.