The Marmot’s Hole

Yan over at yuu bna points to an article in the UB Post on the troubles faced by Mongolian women who marry evil foreigners:

A new style of business has emerged, selling individuals abroad and using them to work as prostitutes in Macao, China and such activities have dramatically increased in the past few years in Mongolia. These reports were published in the “Onoodor,” daily newspaper on March 27.
“One of the ways in which this happens is for people to marry with foreigners,” said an official of the Mongolian Foreign Marriage Registration Office. Another official who wished to remain anonymous said that this type of business has already been involved with certain types of organized crime.
In 2005, 704 Mongolians got married to foreigners, according to the Mongolian Foreign Marriage Registration Office (MFMRO). Out of the 704 Mongolians, 685 were females. The statistics show that most of them got married to South Koreans (536). 24 females as well as 2 males that were wed with Japanese and Chinese citizens. However Mongolian citizens also got married to European citizens, including 19 females and one male that married to German citizens, and 14 females that started their new lives with British residents. The list had a total of 33 countries, including citizens from Russia, USA, Norway, Ukraine, Vietnam, New Zealand, Sweden, Belgium, Australia, Iraq, China, Cameroon, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Hungary, Nigeria, Italy, Serbia, Nepal, Austria, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Poland.
The officials of the MFMRO worry about their future lives, especially for the women. “Who knows? What purpose are foreigners marrying with Mongolian women? Most foreigners, especially South Korean and Chinese got married with Mongolians as a purpose of having a slave for them,” say officials.

And:

When the women come into the National Marriage Registration Office the staff warns them to be careful and ask, “Have you really fell in love with them, are you going to marry with a sincere heart?” Unfortunately, most of them respond, “yes,” or “of-course.” Although soon after they send their complaints about troubles to the Embassy of Mongolia in South Korea, Macao, Germany and other foreign countries. The officials of MFMRO have no information about the rest of the men and women and their living conditions. Mediators put their ads in the newspaper with only their cell phone numbers. In these ads, they say the requirements for the women who want to marry a foreigner are “to be pretty, hard working, in charge and aged between 20-30 years old and no children.” If you have children you have to conceal or leave them.

Yan then asks:

Now I’d really like to know what the Marmot or Nabetz have to say about this topic, since I can’t speak from my own experience yet. What I’d like to know, however, is whether those Mongolian women who are marrying abroad for money or working permits are really so much more naive than Russian or Thai women. If the answer should really be yes, Mongolia sure needs some more education on these issues.

Well, Yan, I’m not really sure if I can answer that. I really don’t know many other foreigners–American, Korean or otherwise–married to Mongolians. My wife could probably offer a lot more insight into this issue, and I’m sure she’ll post a comment or two below. The Mongolian women I’ve men (i.e., my wife’s friends) don’t strike me as particularly naive, but then again, they seem to run in very different social circles than a good number of the Mongolian women who end up getting married to foreigners, or at least to Koreans. I’ve certainly heard horror stories, both about Mongolian women who end up marrying old, abusive drunks and poor Korean farmers who bring a wife over from Mongolia only to have her run away after a week so she can pursue professional opportunities in other sectors.
Aside from those cases, however, a lot of problems seem to arise due to the serious cultural differences between Korean and Mongolia and unrealistic expectations. It can’t be easy for Mongolian women, with their nomadic and Soviet cultural baggage, to adjust to life on the farm in the world’s most Confucian society. Perhaps making the situation worse is that many Mongolian women may come over to Korea with a distorted picture in their head of Korea as the Land of Milk and Honey. Of course, Korea does offer those women opportunities that they’d be unable to attain in Mongolia, and I certainly don’t mean to depict it as some sort of Hell on Earth. But modern Korea is a complex place, and popular images derived from Korean Wave dramas perhaps don’t do the best of jobs conveying the difficulties of life in Korea’s agricultural villages or its industrial suburbs. My own impression is that the folk in the international marriage business, trying as they are not to scare away potential clients, don’t do a good job of explaining the astronomical differences between the two societies, and if education on international marriage is needed (and I have no clue if it is; the piece linked above struck me as similar to the yellow journalism practiced in Korea, but directed at South Koreans and Chinese rather than English teachers and U.S. GIs), this would probably be a good place to start.