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wylies99
Joined: 13 May 2006
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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 Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:00 pm Post subject: A shelter for South Korea's foreign brides |
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A shelter for South Korea's foreign brides
A former motel is now a home for women from developing countries who were kicked out or abused by their husbands. Many weren't allowed to learn Korean, and face hardships in their adopted land.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-korea-shelter14-2010jan14,0,4073702.story
Reporting from Seoul - Cao Thi Nguyen and her baby were marooned in a strange land without family or options.
The young woman, who moved here from Vietnam two years ago to marry a South Korean man, had been kicked out of her home after a fight with her husband's family.
Unable to speak Korean, the slight 29-year-old wandered the streets of Seoul for months until she found a refuge designed to help the growing number of foreign brides in the country -- nearly half of whom report suffering domestic abuse.
Myeongrak Village, a motel-turned-shelter with a capacity for 14 residents, serves women exclusively, providing food and medical costs and a chance at self-reliance.
In South Korea, which in recent years has imported more than 100,000 foreign brides from such nations as China, Mongolia, Vietnam and the Philippines, many newcomers struggle to adapt to their adopted homeland and its close-knit culture. Some are abandoned by their new families.
"Many of those living here were forced out without any preparation by their irresponsible families," said Park Jee-hee, a social worker at Myeongrak Village.
Nguyen is typical of residents at the shelter.
"My husband and his family did not allow me to learn Korean because then I could go out and hang out with friends," said Nguyen, who is seeking a divorce.
(Read the rest at the above link) |
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Olivencia
Joined: 08 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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"I heard my mother-in-law saying that my child was born from a rented belly, which is mine," said a 32-year-old woman surnamed Kim who declined to give her full name. "It was a shock."
--> Just awful. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
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Olivencia
Joined: 08 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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| The poverty I have seen in the Philippines...it's worth the risk. I mean talk about utter despair. They are so desperate to get out of there any glimmer of hope (real or imagined) they will cling to. It's heart breaking. |
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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| redaxe wrote: |
| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
They're duped by slick marketing. They can't entirely be blamed. Thankfully, the word is out about how bad life can be for these women here. Some, no doubt, do end up in a good life. As someone married to a Korean, and who somewhat understands cultural differences that can be encountered, I know it would take a VERY kind and understanding couple to put up with such a drastic/immediate situation such as this.
Especially with a Korean mother-in-law so involved. |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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I can imagine a few bait and switches going on. Though I have met a couple of foreign brides who spoke quite positively about their husbands, not so much about Korea. I'm sure plenty of Korean women get treated badly by their inlaws, but at least they have family to go back to. If social services can't deal with foreign wives, then just repatriate them.
Did Cambodia really ban these kind of marriages? |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| ED209 wrote: |
If social services can't deal with foreign wives, then just repatriate them.
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Who is going to pay for their plane tickets home? And will they be allowed to bring their half-Korean children with them, or are they forced to leave the kids in Korea because the fathers have some kind of custody rights? |
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komerican
Joined: 17 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Julius wrote: |
| bassexpander wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
They're duped by slick marketing. They can't entirely be blamed. |
SE Asian women view it as their duty to sacrifice themselves in order to bring financial benefit to their families.
This can mean prostituting themselves out to fat ugly tourists, or it can mean marrying a Korean male. Whatever enables them to send money home.
The root of it... of course.. the Asian obsession with money and status above all else. |
Why is this an asian obsession? There are hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women who have been recruited as sex workers in the West. Also these SE Asian women are not prostitutes. And of course wife battery is epidemic in the West.
(You know it's inflammatory posts like this that get an angry reaction from other posters, often from pissed-off gyopos. The gyopos get angry, which is the reaction posters like this crave and then they complain to the mods. The gyopos get banned while these sneaky folks feign innocence and continue to write this inflammatory crap.
There was another ridiculous Korea bashing thread where eIn07912 wrote, �Let's face it, the Asians are some greedy bastards.� The gyopo got banned even though he was justified in being pissed about this, while the originating racists comments about Asians got a pass. And btw, using the tragedy in Haiti to bash Koreans/Asians is pretty pathetic  )
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=175314&start=0 |
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conrad2
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| komerican wrote: |
| Julius wrote: |
| bassexpander wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
They're duped by slick marketing. They can't entirely be blamed. |
SE Asian women view it as their duty to sacrifice themselves in order to bring financial benefit to their families.
This can mean prostituting themselves out to fat ugly tourists, or it can mean marrying a Korean male. Whatever enables them to send money home.
The root of it... of course.. the Asian obsession with money and status above all else. |
Why is this an asian obsession? There are hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women who have been recruited as sex workers in the West. Also these SE Asian women are not prostitutes. And of course wife battery is epidemic in the West.
(You know it's inflammatory posts like this that get an angry reaction from other posters, often from pissed-off gyopos. The gyopos get angry, which is the reaction posters like this crave and then they complain to the mods. The gyopos get banned while these sneaky folks feign innocence and continue to write this inflammatory crap.
There was another ridiculous Korea bashing thread where eIn07912 wrote, �Let's face it, the Asians are some greedy bastards.� The gyopo got banned even though he was justified in being pissed about this, while the originating racists comments about Asians got a pass.)
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=175314&start=0 |
That Kyopo got banned because his comments were even more racist and over the top than the original comment. |
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Ukon
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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| redaxe wrote: |
| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
They think south korea is like korean dramas and find korean men very attractive....people actually have pictures of korean men on the walls in Myanmar!  |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Ukon wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
| These women must have it REALLY bad back in their home countries to think that marrying a South Korean farmer could possibly lead to a better life. I'm really curious about how that thought process goes--how any amount of economic benefit could be worth leaving one's home country and all of one's family and friends to basically be a domestic slave to a probably abusive Korean husband and mother-in-law, with whom one cannot even communicate. Unbelievable. |
They think south korea is like korean dramas and find korean men very attractive....people actually have pictures of korean men on the walls in Myanmar! |
I went to Myanmar with a Korean-American friend. We were in a night market one night looking around and some young lady selling bags asked where he was from. He said he was Korean-American and the lady blushed and started getting all doe eyed over the guy, and even called over another cute young lady over to talk to him. She told him she loved the TV show F4 aka Boys Over Flower. She gave him the bag he was looking at for free in exchange for his email |
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morrisonhotel
Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:58 pm Post subject: |
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| komerican wrote: |
| Why is this an asian obsession? There are hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women who have been recruited as sex workers in the West. Also these SE Asian women are not prostitutes. And of course wife battery is epidemic in the West. |
You have a very bizarre understanding of 'recruited'. |
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komerican
Joined: 17 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| morrisonhotel wrote: |
| komerican wrote: |
| Why is this an asian obsession? There are hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women who have been recruited as sex workers in the West. Also these SE Asian women are not prostitutes. And of course wife battery is epidemic in the West. |
You have a very bizarre understanding of 'recruited'. |
Yeah, clearly Julius is right. Euro women are pure and innocent and have been kidnapped by the white slavery industry while evil Asians are prostitutes because of their obsession with money and status.  ...I was using the word sarcastically. |
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kbit
Joined: 18 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think this is necessarily a Korean phenomenon, but one that applies to mail-order brides in general.
For instance in a story I read in the Washington Post years ago (2001) http://www.equaljustice.ca/cgi-bin/forum.cgi/noframes/read/17108
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Last year, approximately 3,400 women with alien spouse visas claimed that their U.S.-citizen husbands were abusive, said Eyleen Schmidt, an INS spokeswoman. About 3,000 successfully obtained a green card without their spouse's sponsorship.
"Some have been held hostage under the INS law," Schmidt said. "The husbands have been telling them, 'I'm going to make INS deport you.' They spend so long fearing the INS that it makes it difficult to reach out to them."
Abuse of the system can go the other way, too, the INS points out. "There is no question that many of the alien women who advertise for U.S. husbands are far more interested in gaining permanent resident alien status than in gaining a good marriage," the 1999 report said.
Proving marriage fraud is difficult: Of the 1,800 marriages the INS reviewed last year, only 38 of the 52 couples charged were convicted of fraud in federal court, Schmidt said.
Neither the INS nor the Justice Department keeps statistics on the frequency of domestic violence in arranged marriages, but Scholes, the mail-order bride researcher, believes the rate is high, partly because the expectations on either side are often vastly different.
In most cases, he said, the men are seeking women with traditional values and expect them to stay home and devote themselves to domesticity. They look overseas, believing that foreign women are easier to control, he said. But these women may have multiple motivations, mixing their feelings for their spouse with a desire to better themselves in their newly adopted country.
Often, Scholes said, the man and woman are at different places in their lives: The age gap is commonly 20 years or more, he said, with most mail-order brides still in their twenties.
Control issues were central to the dissolution of the Schultzes' relationship, Siyi Ming Schultz said in a recent jailhouse interview. "He never let me out. He always wanted me to stay home and cook," she said. "I was happy to do those things, but I wanted to go out, too. But he refused. He was always afraid I would meet somebody else. . . . |
This is in the USA, and quite recent. There is a mentality that if you pay for a bride, you own her, and can do whatever you please, which is pretty sad. This is the unfortunate case whenever there is such a power disparity. |
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morrisonhotel
Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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| komerican wrote: |
| morrisonhotel wrote: |
| komerican wrote: |
| Why is this an asian obsession? There are hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women who have been recruited as sex workers in the West. Also these SE Asian women are not prostitutes. And of course wife battery is epidemic in the West. |
You have a very bizarre understanding of 'recruited'. |
Yeah, clearly Julius is right. Euro women are pure and innocent and have been kidnapped by the white slavery industry while evil Asians are prostitutes because of their obsession with money and status. ...I was using the word sarcastically. |
Sarcasm never comes across well online. Why leave something like that so open to ambiguity? |
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