New York Times article about
Many South Korean Bachelors Seek to Marry Foreign Ladies

“Reaching for a Better Life: Wives and Worries In Marriage Market,” by Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times,
as republished in the Manila Bulletin, March 3, 2007.

HANOI, Vietnam---It was midnight here in Hanoi, or already 2 a.m. back in  Seoul, South Korea. But after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan-su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar here, where 23 young Vietnamese women seeking Korean husbands sat waiting in two dimly lighted rooms.

”Do I have to look at them and decide now?” Mr. Kim asked, as the marriage brokers gave a brief description of each of the women sitting around a U-shaped sofa.

Thus, Mr. Kim, a 39-year-old auto pars worker from a suburb of Seoul, began the mildly chaotic, two-hour process of choosing a spouse. In a day or two, if his five-day marriage tour went according to plan, he would be wed and enjoying his honeymoon at the famed Perfume Pagoda on the Huong Tich Mountain southwest of here.

More and more, South Korean men are finding wives outside of South Korea, where a surplus of bachelors, a lack of marriageable Korean partners and the rising social status of women have combined to shrink the domestic market for the marriage-minded male. Bachelors in China, India and other Asian nations, where the traditional preference for sons has created a disproportionate number of men now fighting over a smaller pool of women, face the same problem.

Now, that industry is seizing on an increasingly globalized marriage market and sending comparatively affluent Korean bachelors searching for b rides in the poorer corners of China and Southeast and Central Asia. The marriage tours are fueling an explosive growth in marriages to foreigners in South Korea, a country whose ethnic homogeneity lies at the core of its self-identity.

In 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14 percent of all marriages in South Korea, up from 4 percent in 2000.

After an initial set back---his first three choices found various reasons to decline his offer---Mr. Kim narrowed his field to a 22-year-old college student and an 18-year-old high school graduate.

”What’s your personality like?” Mr. Kim asked the college student.

”I’m an extrovert,” she said.

The 18-year-old asked why he wanted to marry a Vietnamese woman.

”I have two colleagues who married Vietnamese women,” he said, adding, “The women seem devoted and family-oriented.”

One Korean broker said the 22-year-old, who seemed bright and assertive, would adapt well to South Korea.

“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?” She went over to sit next to him, though neither dared to hold hands. She spelled out her name in her left palm: Vien. Her name was To Thi Vien.

In South Korea, billboards advertising marriages to foreigners dot the countryside, and fliers are scattered on the Seoul subway. The business began in the late 1990s by matching South Korean farmers or the physically disabled mostly to ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors, and the foreign brides came from a host of countries.

The widespread availability of sex-screen technology for pregnant women has resulted in the birth of a disproportionate number of South Korean males. And South Korea’s growing wealth has increased women’s educational and employment opportunities, even as it has led to rising divorce rates and plummeting birthrates.

Critics say the business demeans and exploits poor women. But brokers say they are merely matching the needs of Korean men and foreign women seeking better lives.

”But this business will get more difficult as these countries get richer,” said Won Hyun-jae, the owner of i-Bombit, another agency. “Now, even a disabled Korean man can find a Vietnamese bride. But eventually Vietnamese women will ask why they have to go marry a Korean man when life in Vietnam is good.”

The other client who traveled with Kim Wan-su was Kim Tae-goo, 51, grows ginseng and apples on the land he owns in Yeongju.  He had recently divorced a Chinese woman he married after the death of his first wife, a Korean woman. He lives with his 16-year-old daughter and his elderly mother.

”My 16-year-old daughter lives with me, and I’m a farmer,” Mr. Kim said to one of the women at the Lucky Star Karaoke bar, most of whom were in their early 20s. “Is that O.K. with you?”

”I know how to farm,” said Bui Thi Thuy, 22, one of the two women Mr. Kim eventually focused on.

Asked whether she had any questions, Ms. Thuy said she had none. But the other woman, an earnest 28-year-old in a light-green jacket, asked, “If I marry you, will you love me and take care of me forever?”

”Of course,” Mr. Kim answered, then quickly settled on Ms. Thuy.

After a few hours’ sleep, the new couples and the brokers squeezed into a van for the four-hour ride t the women’s home province, Quang Ninh, about four hours east of Hanoi.

There, the couples would be interviewed by the local authorities before register for their marriages.

Both Mrs. Vien and Ms. Thuy had friends who had married Korean men and lived, happily it seemed, in South Korea. Like many Vietnamese, they were also avid fans of Korean television shows and movies, the so-called Korean Wave of pop culture that has swept all of Asia since the late 1990s.

Ms. Vien had registered two years earlier with a broker for marriages with Korans. Her father, a construction worker for a local farm, was able to send her to college.

By contrast, Ms. Thuy was one of five children of rice farmers. She had registered with the agency soon after graduating from high school.

”A friend of mine married a Korean man and now lives in Seoul,” Ms. Thuy said. “We talk on the phone sometimes. She’s very happy. She says there are so many people and tall buildings in Seoul.”

At age 22, she said, half of her peers had already married. As she waited to marry, she helped with household chores, forbidden by her parents to engage in the farm work that might blemish her looks.

The younger Mr. Kim wrote a letter in Koran to his bride---trying to allay the anxieties he saw on her face—but found no way to relay its meaning.

The couples bought Koran and Vietnamese dictionaries, pointing to words or using broken English.

About 40 hours after landing here in Hanoi, the Korean men married their Vietnamese brides in a double ceremony. The brides’ relatives waited at a large restaurant here with expectant looks.

Sanding next to her daughter and her new son-in-law, Ms. Thuy’s mother, Nguyen Thi Nguyet, 56, said: “This is a poor country, but conditions are much better in Korea. I hope my daughter will have a better life there.”

But Ms. Thuy’s father, Bui Van Vui, 52, was displeased that his daughter was marrying a man just one year younger than he was.

”I’m still very worried because of the age gap,” he said. “I’m slightly relieved now that I see my son-in-law for the first time. But I can’t stop worrying.”

As he left the restaurant, the father turned around at the entrance to take a final look at his daughter. He pressed two fingers against his lips and blew a kiss goodbye.

Later, Ms. Thuy said: “I was my father’s favorite. He really adores me and is worried.”

She, too, was worried. “I know Korea only from television, bit it must be very, very different from reality. I don’t know whether my new family will like me, and I don’t know how I’ll adapt. I’m overwhelmed with worries.”