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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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 Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:48 pm Post subject: The Korea Times: Disinformation Saddens Vietnamese Wives |
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From today's The Korea Times ...
Disinformation Saddens Vietnamese Wives
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Guen, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman, first arrived in a city in Kyonggi Province nine months ago to marry a Korean man she was connected to through a marriage agency.
Guen had little knowledge of her husband, other than that he was in his 40s, which was what the agency had told her. He turned out to be 60.
It was too late for Guen to back out from the marriage, with her family back in Ho Chi Minh City, she needed the money and was incapable of paying the penalties for breach of contract.
Her life as a wife proved turbulent with the language barrier leading to communication problems that her husband often tried to solve by slapping her in the face. She couldn�t handle it.
Guen is now back in Vietnam and her Korean husband is refusing to divorce her without her paying consolation fees.
In less than a year in Korea, Guen�s experience of what she believed to be a land full of promise has turned the dream into a grotesque parody.
Guen�s story is a radical example of what many young foreign women are experiencing when they come to Korea to marry in need of money.
According to a recent survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, about 13 percent of foreign wives who married Korean men through marriage agencies said they received fraudulent information about their husbands from the companies.
The rate was much higher for Vietnamese wives, with more than 70 percent of them relying on marriage agencies to find their Korean husbands. According to the ministry, more than 30 percent of Vietnamese wives said that their Korean husbands were different from the persons described by the companies, mostly in terms of wealth, jobs and character.
About 30 percent of the 1,061 foreign wives who participated in the survey said they have been suffering discrimination from their Korean families based on their ethnic differences. Nearly 40 percent of them pointed out the language barrier as the biggest problem, while 15 percent of them mentioned the lack of job opportunities or training.
[email protected]
03-22-2007 |
Some background information ...
Korean Men Use Brokers to Find Brides in Vietnam
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I appreciate the honesty with which The Korea Times has decided to discuss this issue. In 2005, 14% of all marriages in South Korea involved a non-Korean. I believe the percentage has since risen to 15, so it's an increasingly important matter. Take that, Arirang TV! |
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ChuckECheese
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:42 am Post subject: |
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| Nice! Ajossi heaven! |
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rawiri
Joined: 01 Jun 2003
Location: Lovely day for a fire drill.
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:01 am Post subject: |
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Thats a pretty blunt article,
One Korean broker said the 22-year-old, who seemed bright and assertive, would adapt well to South Korea. Another suggested flipping a coin.
�Well, since I�m quiet, I�ll choose the extrovert,� Mr. Kim said finally, adding quickly, �Is it O.K. if I hold her hand now?� |
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markhan
Joined: 02 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:07 am Post subject: Re: The Korea Times: Disinformation Saddens Vietnamese Wives |
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| Troll_Bait wrote: |
I appreciate the honesty with which The Korea Times has decided to discuss this issue. In 2005, 14% of all marriages in South Korea involved a non-Korean. I believe the percentage has since risen to 15, so it's an increasingly important matter. Take that, Arirang TV! |
What honesty?
The problem with the marriage between a Korean male and a foreign bride has been done to death in news magazine shows like "We would like to know," "In-depth 60 minutes," "PD News" and countless others.
Personally speaking, I don't think highly of foreign brides who has no knowledge whatsoever of their prospective husband, his native language and culture and get hitched just to move to a richer country. It is a precarious situation and no matter how uneducated they are, they ought to know better. |
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ChuckECheese
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:24 am Post subject: Re: The Korea Times: Disinformation Saddens Vietnamese Wives |
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| markhan wrote: |
| Personally speaking, I don't think highly of foreign brides who has no knowledge whatsoever of their prospective husband, his native language and culture and get hitched just to move to a richer country. It is a precarious situation and no matter how uneducated they are, they ought to know better. |
I respect your personal opinion but I have to disagree with your statement. If you've ever travel to those 3rd world countries, you would know why they would do such a thing.
With no job, no future, hunger, and choice between prostitution and marriage, they would gladly marry one of these Korean Ajossi in a heart beat. |
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rocklee
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:37 am Post subject: |
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| I find the whole thing ugly and terribly degrading. |
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dutchy pink
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 6:15 am Post subject: |
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"Personally speaking, I don't think highly of foreign brides who has no knowledge whatsoever of their prospective husband, his native language and culture and get hitched just to move to a richer country. It is a precarious situation and no matter how uneducated they are, they ought to know better."
Like chuckecheese, i disagree, but since it is just your opinion that's fine. "they ought to know better" perhaps they do. Like you, they picked up and moved to another country not knowing what to expect. My guess is that their situation was far more dire than yours was. You probably left a pretty good life to enter the unknown. Is that a sign of being well educated? Leaving a desperate situation in hopes of something better. Is that a sign of intelligence? I think so. |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 7:22 am Post subject: |
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| I'd smack a bi**h too if she wouldn't learn my language! 'Specially if I paid 2000 bones! |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 8:18 am Post subject: |
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| I can't help thinking of the traditional preference for sons and abortions of girls backfiring in cases like this. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 8:26 am Post subject: |
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I don't think this type of disinformation is new. I think every chick gets saddened after they find out we're not the multi-billionaire with a mansion that we told them we were at the bar at the Hard Kock Cafe. It happens the world over and probably goes all the way back to the caveman days.  |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:10 am Post subject: |
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Why Do Vietnamese Women Marry Korean Farmers?
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One of six men in Korea�s farming and fishing villages is now married to a Vietnamese woman. A report says of the 8,027 farmers and fishermen got married in 2005, 2,885 or 35.9 percent of them had foreign wives, with more than half of them (1,535) marrying Vietnamese women. What persuades so many women from Vietnam to come all this way to marry Koreans? Prof. Kim Hyun-jae of Youngsan University is the author of the first academic paper on the subject. Titled �Immigration of Vietnamese Women to Korea thorough Marriage,� it analyzes the reasons from the Vietnamese perspective.
Kim stresses that most of the Vietnamese women who marry Korean men come from farming villages in the country�s southern Mekong Delta. In 2005, the Korean Embassy in Hanoi in the North issued 720 marriage visas. The number of marriage visas issued by the consulate in the southern city of Ho Chi Minh was five times higher at 3,853.
Vietnam�s Doi Moi (reform) policies have improved its economy greatly, but the gap between urban and rural areas has grown, with the upper 10 percent income brackets earning 13.5 times more than the bottom 10 percent in 2005. The Mekong Delta also suffers an imbalance between the number of men and women, because many men moved to cities to find a job. In 2004, there were 365,300 more women than men in the region. Kim says all these social and economic problems led Vietnamese women to seeking husbands abroad.
Annexed in the late 17th century, the Mekong Delta has very different traditions and culture from the north. It embraced Indian, Islamic, French and American influences over the course of history, which makes it far less influenced by Confucianism than the north and thus more open to marriage with foreigners. Since milk money is common, arranged marriages are also familiar.
The third reason is social changes in neighboring nations. Until 2000, most Vietnamese women married Taiwanese men -- some 13,863 in 2000 alone. Taiwanese men, like Korean men now, would be introduced to tens or hundreds of women by matchmaking agencies during a weeklong visit to Vietnam. If they met a woman they liked, they would register their marriage there and then before returning home with their brides. But Taiwan saw the same problems Korea is now facing, including human trafficking and domestic violence, so the Taiwanese government made it harder to acquire citizenship, which resulted in decrease in such marriages. Korean men are filling the gap. The number of marriages between Korean men and Vietnamese women jumped from 95 in 2000 to 5,822 in 2005, leaving Taiwan behind with 3,212.
Lastly, the Korean pop culture craze sweeping Asia has played a part. Some 100 Korean dramas were aired in Vietnam from 1997 until 2005. The drama �Jewel in the Palace� has been aired five times. Women in Vietnam�s rural areas, where newspapers and magazines are rare and TV is almost the only link to the outside world, have come to admire Korea by watching the soaps. The local media have warned of the illusions about Korea created by these dramas.
Kim is calling for measures to help Vietnamese women married to Korean men. �The government should develop Korean language programs for them according to their academic level and provide support to ease their economic difficulties and help them find jobs,� he said.
([email protected] ) |
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