According to the Korean embassy in Cambodia and Korean human rights groups, the Cambodian government has, at least temporarily, banned marriages between Cambodians and Koreans, reports Yonhap.
At the beginning of the month, the Cambodian government reportedly called in an official from the embassy and told him that they were provisionally suspending marriages between locals and Koreans. This was followed up on March 5 with an official document confirming the measure.
A Korean embassy official said when they asked the Japanese embassy and other foreign embassies, it turned out the only country this applied to was Korea.
As to why Korea would be targeted, the official said that 60% of the international marriages in Cambodia were with Koreans, and most of those were through marriage middlemen. In the case of other foreigners like Canadians, Americans and French, it is usual for couples to marry out of love and live locally.
The official noted that in September of last year, one marriage middleman (apparently a local) gathered together 25 local women for a meeting with a single Korean man. The authorities discovered this, and after a trial the Cambodian middleman was sentenced to 10 years in the pen. The official explained that this got a lot of local press attention, so it appears the current measure was taken so the government can come up with a system [to prevent abuses].
Oddly enough, the Cambodian government enacted similar measures in March 2008, after which they banned international marriages through middlemen. In November of the same year, the government permitted love marriages with Koreans, but made Koreans stay in-country for a month so documents could be screened and interviews given. This failed to root out the problem, however, with Koreans not keeping the rules and middlemen operating openly. Or so reported Yonhap.
The Korean embassy official said they would talk with the Cambodian government to inform them that marriages with Koreans have nothing to do with human trafficking and that there are a lot of Cambodians who want to come to Korea for the “Korean Dream.” He said they’d do their best mariages take place cleanly and fairly after a new system is implemented in accordance with realistic conditions.
Last year, 1,372 Cambodian women came to Korea after marrying Koreans. As of the end of last year, 3,230 Cambodian wives of Korean men were in Korea, not including those who naturalized as Korean citizens.
Marmot’s Note: Banning ALL marriages between Koreans and locals seems a rather severe thing to do…
UPDATE: I open my email, and see that Tom Coyner has linked to a Deutsche Press-Agentur article on the same thing.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I cannot support a government interfering with the marriage choices on its citizenry. No way.
Still, I wish I could have been at the meeting when Cambodians were complaining about loser Koreans who can’t get a decent job coming over and stealing their women.
Were I Cambodian, I too would feel a bit unhappy about such South Korean
foreigners stealing our women and tainting our pure Cambodian blood and nation which dates back ten thousand years.
It ain’t about tainting the blood with the Khmer, it’s that when they get up to the promised land and are made to become adjusted to “Korean culture” they realize how much better they had it back in their 3rd world homes…
Lolz. Where’s pawi to dig at the loser Englishee teacher on this one?
Marmot’s OP does not tell us why Cambodia is doing this — although the news stories do. Minor quibble, but it would have been helpful to mention “trafficking concerns” in the post.
slim: 7th Paragraph…
I wonder, where can korean losers get their brides now?? They can only get them from South east asia… This sucks for them lol…..
I remember talking to a few Bodes about Koreans and they said Korean tourists are ok, but the ones that lived there were “not good.”
They did tell me that many of the Korean tourist acted arrogant and rude however. I got to see this for myself at Angkor, but that was 2.5 years ago, so maybe things are different now…yeah right.
Yeah, there are something like 20,000 “loser” English teachers in Korea. How many Koreans are there in other people’s countries?
Last I heard, there were about 450, 000 ILLEGAL, loser Koreans in the US and Canada.
#8 so true… those illegal losers should be deported back to korea…
#8, JohnT: 450,000 ILLEGAL loser Koreans? Where did you get this statistic? Oh…you “heard”~ right. Does this number include the Koreans who are in the USA legally and NOT losers (you know, the Koreans that make more money and have higher standards of living than you)…or is this an all-in total?
“Does this number include the Koreans who are in the USA legally and NOT losers (you know, the Koreans that make more money and have higher standards of living than you)…or is this an all-in total?”
More likely referring to the low-quality border-jumpers who work as prostitutes or illegally in bodegas. But yeah, as for the OP, holy international cock-block, Batman!
I have noticed a few Korean guys in Seoul with foreign brides here and there — a handful of them were with fairly cute Russian women, walking hand in hand with them down the street. I imagine the guys who raid SE Asia are probably from the countryside and lack other options.
On the other hand, let’s face it. Loser white American guys are the Kings of Loserville when it comes to raiding Third World countries for impoverished bootie. Hell, just go to Itaewon and you’ll get a glimpse of sloppy looking white guys who look like a bunch of unemployed Jeffrey Dalmers, shuffling around staring at their feet with that dejected look of agony of their face. Man, Itaewon is a serious dump. Good thing is serves as a fly trap for the unwanted and undesirable.
As stories like this and this and this and this make their way around SE Asia, don’t be surprised if more governments follow Cambodia’s lead.
@5
Cambodian Woman Stabs Korean Husband
A very young battered wife in Daegu has been arrested for attempting to kill her abusive husband.
On the 2nd the Dalseong Police Department in Daegu arrested 18-year old Cambodian Mrs. L on charges of attempted murder for stabbing her husband after he attacked her.
According to police, at approximately 11:40 pm on the 30th in their home in the Hwawon-eup area of Daegu, her husband, 38-year old Mr. Kim, who was drunk, began beating and kicking her head and side. Mrs. L took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed him in the stomach.
Investigators concluded that Mrs. L had sought help from her mother-in-law after her husband had beaten after they had had a fight. Upon learning of this Mr. Kim demanded to know if she had called his mother and then beat her again. [link]
Cambodian Wife Gets Jail Term for Killing Husband
The Daegu District Court gave the unidentified woman, 18, a four-year sentence Thursday for stabbing her husband to death.
She was pregnant, and we acknowledge that she used the knife to defend herself. But she stabbed him three times and the wounds showed that she attacked him consciously, so it was a preemptive attack rather than legitimate self-defense,” the court said.
The woman came to Korea in April of last year to get married. The 38-year-old husband, under the influence of alcohol, attacked her at their home in Daegu in January. [link]
And the moral of the story brought to you by the folks at Yonhap:
“Cambodian people think it rude for people to touch their head. That might be why 18-year old Mrs. Choun (pseudonym) stabbed her husband . . .” [link]
Cambodian Woman Stabs Korean Husband
A very young battered wife in Daegu has been arrested for attempting to kill her abusive husband.
On the 2nd the Dalseong Police Department in Daegu arrested 18-year old Cambodian Mrs. L on charges of attempted murder for stabbing her husband after he attacked her.
According to police, at approximately 11:40 pm on the 30th in their home in the Hwawon-eup area of Daegu, her husband, 38-year old Mr. Kim, who was drunk, began beating and kicking her head and side. Mrs. L took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed him in the stomach.
Investigators concluded that Mrs. L had sought help from her mother-in-law after her husband had beaten after they had had a fight. Upon learning of this Mr. Kim demanded to know if she had called his mother and then beat her again. Yonhap 2/2/09
Cambodian Wife Gets Jail Term for Killing Husband
The Daegu District Court gave the unidentified woman, 18, a four-year sentence Thursday for stabbing her husband to death.
She was pregnant, and we acknowledge that she used the knife to defend herself. But she stabbed him three times and the wounds showed that she attacked him consciously, so it was a preemptive attack rather than legitimate self-defense,” the court said.
The woman came to Korea in April of last year to get married. The 38-year-old husband, under the influence of alcohol, attacked her at their home in Daegu in January. KT 07/11/09
And the moral of the story brought to you by the folks at Yonhap:
“Cambodian people think it rude for people to touch their head. That might be why 18-year old Mrs. Choun (pseudonym) stabbed her husband . . .” Yonhap 03/06/09
@#11 – aaronm
There is a HUGE number of illegal Koreans living in America and most of them are NOT low-end border jumpers working in bars. Most are gi-ruk-ee families. Families where dad has stayed in Korea while mom and the kids go to the USA on a visa never to return. Often they realize (especially now with the US economy the way it is) that being here alone is not what they thought it would be. They are ill-prepared to take care of themselves and their kids and life is difficult. Often the husbands stop sending them money and the families end up joining churches seeking aid and assistance from the congregations.
Most never end-up returning to Korea as you would think they would (but I’m beginning to see that change lately), but that’s a discussion for another time as I have my theories as to why (their husbands don’t want them to).
I’m an American, married to a Korean (now naturalized US Citizen) and so I see this a lot. I would venture to say that at my wife’s church, out of the approximately 200 members, 1/3 to 3/4 are illegal; including the pastor and his family. This is not an “uncommon” phenomenon.
#13:
One can only hope. Wish I had a K-note for every story I’ve heard from a Filipina about an abusive Korean husband. Tedious. The word’s been out about Adashi for quite a while, shouldn’t have married him to begin with.
Same with the Philippine government finally deciding to tighten up visas for girls coming to work in the villes. Better late than never I guess….
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