The Maeil Business Newspaper reports that with incidents of human rights abuses against foreign wives on the rise, Korea’s East Asian neighbors are warning their women of the dangers of marrying Korean men.
Apparently, the governments of the Philippines and Vietnam are conducting special classes for women planning to emigrate to the Land of the Morning Calm to marry. In these classes, the women are advised to avoid marrying rural Korean men and warned that men and marriage brokers often lie about their prospective husband’s financial assets. They also encourage the brides to be to get their husbands checked for AIDS and venereal diseases, and are given contact numbers of civic groups from which to ask help in the event that they are abused.
In Vietnam, the popular image of Korean men has taken a beating recently following local media reports that Korean men are commercializing their womenfolk.
In Russia and Uzbekistan, from which more and more women are coming to Korea to marry, governments have strengthened procedures to obtain marriage permits for Korean men… and Korean men only. Men must now stay in those countries more than a month to complete all the required procedures, including health exams, with some resorting to hundreds or thousands of dollars in bribes to expedite things.
The concerned governments have for some time tried—through both official and unofficial routes—to make Seoul aware of the human rights abuses faced by their women who have gone to Korea to marry Korea men. Last year, the Korean government passed a series of countermeasures designed to protect foreign wives, including the granting of permanent residency to wives who’ve resided in Korea for over two years. This was meant to allow foreign wives to leave abusive husbands without fear of deportation, although the measures excepts those cases in which the women are considered at fault for the divorce.
The most urgent matter, many say, is reform of the international marriage industry. There are currently about 1,500 international marriage brokers operating throughout Korea; many are connected to prostitution, and most do not support wives after they come to Korea. What’s needed is a system that would allow only licensed businesses to operate and punish those that engage in arranging sham marriages and the like.
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10 Comments
I’m looking forward to Nulji’s comments.
Notice no mention is made of rights or protections for foreign husbands…
By coincidence, last night a co-worker lent me her copy of the DVD “My Wedding Campaign” in which two rural guys go off to Uzbekistan looking for wives via a Korean match making service.
It’s a romance-comedy film so it’d be dangerous to assume it portrays reality although I was surprised one part of it did include a barrage of complaints from female Uzbek escapees who claimed they were mislead by the match making company regarding the men they married.
In the end, the Uzbek government forces the Korean agency to close down and gives the Koreans currently there for the agency’s services 48 hours to leave the country as the whole matchmaking thing was described as being a “disturbance to Uzbek society” or something like that.
Anyway, it was just interesting and I was surprised the movie included such a twist.
That was a great movie, full of plausibly realistic and dramatic (not melodramatic) details—while still managing to be a romantic comedy. And I can’t say too much without giving away the ending, the story’s resolution involves another issue that is presumably unfashionable to discuss in Uri Party circles. It won’t disappoint, and it definitely goes against the grain of some other contemporary movies such as JSA and Welcome to Dongmakgol. (Whoops, I’m giving away too much already!)
(As a bonus, there’s a great scene of a woman who appears to be ethnically Russian, speaking in broad Gyeongsang dialect.)
(What Jodi mentioned—the closing down of the matchmaking agency—is not a spoiler, as that’s not the end of the movie….)
Is that the movie where the ajoshi falls down and starts spinning around in the floor after drinking too much or am I thinking of the Three Stoogies . . . ?
Um, I’m trying to place that scene, but I can’t recall one like that….
There’s a graphic vomit scene in there.
What’s the Korean title of this movie?
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