It has been argued that there are two different forms of couple violence: common couple violence and patriarchal terrorism. This study focused on the latter form of violence and tried to investigate the abuse experience and the coping behavior of wives who severely experienced various types of abuses from their husbands and temporarily resided in a shelter affiliated with Jeonju Women\'s Hotline. In-depth interview technique was performed to collect information on abuse experience and coping behavior with nine wives. The content of collected information on wife abuse was classified into 10 types of abuse based on the framework of \'Power and Control Wheel\' developed by Pence and Paymar(1993) in Duluth, and the information on coping behavior was classified into active and passive behavior.
The major results of this research were as follows. First, all informants reported that they experienced simultaneously various types of abuse from their husbands. It was also found that the types of emotional abuse and physical violence were the most frequently experienced types of abuse by all nine wives. Second, regarding coping behavior, wives showed rather passive coping behavior under the situation when their husbands physically violated them, while they showed rather active coping behavior during staying in the shelter. Resources in wives\' social network were also found to be helpful for abused wives to cope with the abuse positively. In conclusion, this research discussed implications of these results for an appropriate intervention with severely abused wives and their children.