|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
|
 Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:54 am Post subject: S. Koreans Search Far and Wide for a Wife |
 |
|
Facing a shortage of prospective rural brides, many men are forced to look abroad.
By Barbara Demick
Times Staff Writer
| Quote: |
NAMWON, South Korea � It was the constellation of acne across her cheeks that made No. 242 stand out from the other young women who were paraded before him in a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City.
Jeong Ha-gi, 46, flew to Vietnam on a tour organized for South Korean bachelors. He was looking for a wife who would be tough enough to withstand the rigors of life on a rice farm. Trying to distinguish among all the women with the numbers pinned to their shirts, he decided the one with a bad complexion might be made of sturdy stuff. They were married three days later.
Today, they live together in sullen silence, a chasm of cultural differences between them. She speaks no Korean, he no Vietnamese. They communicate � barely � with a well-thumbed phrase book. Nguyen Thu Dong, who turned out to be only 20, doesn't like getting up at 5 a.m. to do the farm chores. She turns up her nose at kimchi.
"We have a lot of issues between us," said the burly Jeong, who in his undershirt resembles a Korean version of the young Marlon Brando. "Our age difference, our culture, our food. But I wanted a wife and she is who I got."
Despite the obvious pitfalls, South Korean men increasingly are going abroad to find wives. They have little choice in the matter unless they want to remain bachelors for life.
The marriage market in Asia is becoming rapidly globalized, and just in time for tens of thousands of single-but-looking South Korean men, most of them in the countryside where marriageable women are in scant supply. With little hope of finding wives of their own nationality and producing children to take over the farm, the men are pooling their family's resources to raise up to $20,000 to find a spouse abroad.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that last year 13% of South Korean marriages were to foreigners. More than a third of the rural men who married last year have foreign wives, most of them Vietnamese, Chinese and Philippine. That's a huge change in a country once among the most homogenous in the world.
To some extent, the globalized marriage market is having a trickle-down effect, exacerbating the shortage of marriage-age women elsewhere, particularly China.
"There is a long-standing son preference throughout Asia, but now it is happening in the context of this 21st century marriage market," said Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist and author of "Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population."
The preference for sons has translated in South Korea into 113 male births for every 100 females. Ultrasound became widely available here in the 1980s, and the first generation screened for gender before birth is now coming of marriageable age.
But perhaps an even larger factor in the disappearance of young women from the countryside is their tendency to move to the cities in search of careers or urban husbands or both.
"South Korean women don't want to live in the countryside. They don't want to do hard labor, getting their skin brown in the sun. The cities are less traditional, less patriarchal," said Yang Soon-mi, a social worker with the Ministry of Agriculture.
The wife shortage is most severe here in the southwestern region of Jeolla, the traditional heartland of Korea. This is one of the few swaths of South Korea where the rice paddies have not yet been cemented over for gray slabs of high-rise apartments. On a hot August day, the air is thick with the chirping of the cicadas, and red peppers are drying in the sun on the pavement.
On roads cutting through the fields, marriage brokers advertise their services on billboards.
"Vietnamese marriage," reads a billboard in shocking pink on an otherwise quiet country lane.
The wife shortage is having a devastating effect on the agricultural communities, already threatened by urbanization and free trade. Without wives, young men won't want to stay on the farm. Without wives, there are no babies to replenish the stock of farmers.
South Korea and Taiwan are tied for the lowest birthrates in the world, 1.1 per woman, according to a study released last month by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. Unlike China, South Korea does not limit births, and is in fact offering tax incentives to encourage more children.
Many of the villages around Jeolla are virtual ghost towns, with a sparse population of elderly residents and hardly a child in sight.
"There are only old people around here," said Le Pho, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman who married a South Korean a year ago and is now pregnant. Her child will be the first born in the village, Seogok-ri, in more than 20 years. Despite a regulation, widely ignored, prohibiting doctors from divulging the sex of the fetus, Le knows already that she is having a boy.
"My husband and mother-in-law are very happy. They've treated me very well since they found out the baby is a boy," Le said. "The neighbors too. When they see my belly, they are amazed."
In fact, the foreign wives are key to rescuing some of these farm villages from extinction.
In a nearby village, Oaktae-ri, there are five young children, four of them born to foreign women. Park Jeong-su, 46, whose Chinese-born wife recently gave birth to a daughter, said that all the Korean women in his village moved to Seoul and other cities because they didn't like the farming life.
"When I was a young man, I could find women to date, women who would sleep with me. But nobody who would go to the countryside," said Park, a powerfully built and handsome man with a roguish sense of humor. "Whenever I met a woman I liked, the first question she would ask was, 'Where is your apartment?' "
After more than a decade of looking for a Korean wife, Park went to the Philippines. He didn't meet anyone he liked. He then tried the Unification Church, which has often matched up international couples for group weddings. That didn't work either. He then accepted a friend's invitation to go to Harbin in northeastern China, where he was introduced by a friend's cousin to Yi Ok-ran.
Yi is ethnic Korean and already spoke the language.
"All the women in my village wanted to go to South Korea. We heard that life is good, that people are wealthy," said Yi, cuddling her infant daughter. As a result, she said, in her village in Tonghe County there are also only old people and few children. "There are so many old bachelors."
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
| This is old news? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
One would have to wonder if it's just the countryside where there is a shortage of wives.
Given the fact for many years parents aborted their babies when they found out they were girls. The problem is only going to worsen. It's true that the younger generation of parents is less likely to go to such a drastic measure, but there could still be some consequences due to the fact that it was practiced for quiet sometime. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Imagine the shortage of women in Vietnam and the Phillipines. What do poor south asian men do?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The funny thing is Korean are so parnoid about bloodlines. Yet some extreme consequences of both past and present decisions are causing Koreans to make choices that will cause mixed bloodlines.
My guess in 50 years there will be very few true Koreans who have a 100% Korean bloodline. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
seoulsucker
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: The Land of the Hesitant Cutoff
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Milwaukiedave wrote: |
| My guess in 50 years there will be very few true Koreans who have a 100% Korean bloodline. |
From what I gather there aren't any people with 100% Korean bloodlines now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Milwaukiedave wrote: |
The funny thing is Korean are so parnoid about bloodlines. Yet some extreme consequences of both past and present decisions are causing Koreans to make choices that will cause mixed bloodlines.
My guess in 50 years there will be very few true Koreans who have a 100% Korean bloodline. |
Some Koreans are paranoid about bloodlines, and some Koreans are not. The Koreans who are 'mixing bloodlines' (whatever the significance of that loaded term) don't tend to be the ones who are paranoid about such things. If it was the hardcore eugenicist Koreans who were personally having to marry non-Koreans, that would be funny, but as it is, however, it's about as ironic as the situation anywhere else that people get upset about 'interracial' relationships.
| Quote: |
| My guess in 50 years there will be very few true Koreans who have a 100% Korean bloodline. |
What's a 'true Korean' and what's a '100% Korean bloodline'? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hosub
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| There's no such thing as a 100% racially pure Korean. Koreans are a more diverse people than admitted. Let the mixing ensue! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
matthews_world
Joined: 15 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Good for us guys! Urbanized Korean women are goin' for the foreigner. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Milwaukiedave wrote: |
| it was practiced for quiet sometime. |
What a great typo!
I've seen those banners a few times that advertise marriage to Vietnamese.
Surely the internet can help. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Imagine the shortage of women in Vietnam and the Phillipines. What do poor south asian men do? |
Interesting question. Here is some information on gender ratios:
A body of Chinese poetry, The Book of Songs, believed to date from 1000-700 B.C., offers this advice to new parents:
When a son is born
Let him sleep on the bed,
Clothe him with fine clothes.
And give him jade to play with. ...
When a daughter is born,
Let her sleep on the ground,
Wrap her in common wrappings,
And give her broken tiles for playthings.
In many parts of Asia, that advice appears to have stuck. Centuries later, a strong preference for sons persists, enhanced by technology that increasingly allows parents to realize their desires. Amniocentesis and ultrasound can easily identify the sex of a fetus, and sex-selective abortion has become an everyday practice. Daughters who are born are frequently given up, and thousands are adopted out of the country every year. On the horizon are inexpensive sperm-sorting techniques that will guarantee a son even before conception. New technology, of course, is not the only factor; in some rural areas, old-fashioned female infanticide still lingers.
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i34/34a01401.htm
Here is a list of Gender ratios around the world:
http://www.xist.org/earth/pop_gender.aspx
Of course this includes all people, marriagable age or not, but interesting anyway, I think.
Country Population Male Female Gender ratio
China 1,315,844,000 675,852,000 639,992,000 106
Korea, Republic of 47,817,000 23,973,000 23,844,000 101
Japan 128,084,000 62,578,000 65,506,000 96
Viet Nam 84,239,000 42,068,000 42,171,000 100
Philippines 83,055,000 41,814,000 41,241,000 101 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Interesting article here as well.
India, like China has big problems with gender imbalance.
Punjab, India's granary and its most prosperous state, has added another claim to its record: it's the state with the worst child sex ratio: 776 girls for every 1,000 boys. There are districts in the state where only one girl child has been born in the past six months.
Other thoughts. Asia has a long way to go as far as human rights for women, especially in the third world countries:
Going forward, there are three challenges:
Women are not organized or united. Those of us in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, need to mobilize to assist our fellows. Only our outrage and our political pressure can lead to change.
The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement Shariah, or Islamic law, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a life of domestic slavery.
Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights.
This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.
http://www.southasianmedia.net/index_opinion.cfm?category=women&country=WORLD |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cohiba
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:42 pm Post subject: Women |
|
|
I hate to say it, but I am probably, to some extent, partially
responsible for these stats. Once a woman has taken a ride
on the Cohiba Express a life on the farm holds little exhileration.
Sorry Korea |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ChuckECheese
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I think the part of the problem with shortage of available women in Korea is that us waygooks have multiple Korean gf's.
We don't have trouble finding Korean women do we? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Location: the crib
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| The idea of finding a woman so that you can have kids to replenish the farm is almost sadistic. It's obvious that most people don't want to live in little farm villages anymore. They want urbanization and toilets that flush. But these poor children being bred like animals will doubtlessly have little to no choice in the matter. They'll be made from a young age to work the farm, be given little education, and thus little other opportunities. It's very sad to me. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
