International Marriage: Globalization From the Ground Up

Feb.20,2007

By Kwon Taesun, Editorial Writer
The Hankyoreh (South Korea)

"Mr. Park, whose wife is from Cambodia, said that soon after getting married, he realized that women enjoy more rights in Cambodia than they do in Korea, so he struggles to free himself from his male-centered thinking to better accommodate his wife."

"I hate it that people look at a man who has married a woman from Southeast Asia as having something wrong with him, so I try to avoid telling people that we’re an international couple."

So said 33-year-old Mr. Park when he visited the Women Migrants Human Rights Center last month. You hear complaints like his more than any others if you work with women who have migrated to new countries through international marriage. One Vietnamese woman who married a Taiwanese had to field questions from her relatives asking her why she would marry a man from Taiwan and if there was something wrong with his family, and his relatives would ask her questions like how much money she was sending to her family and whether she was going to "run away like other Vietnamese women."

The problem is that a lot of people see international marriage with women from China or Southeast Asia as the buying and selling of brides or as some sort of social problem. Many women in these marriages are seen as passive victims or gold diggers. Their husbands are seen as bad and abusive, or men who are at the very least fools for being tricked into marriage. These images may seem to contrast with one another at first, but they all end up making the women in these marriages out to be the "inferior Other."

Strictly speaking, however, women in international marriages and even their husbands are people are trying to escape being victims of capitalistic globalization. "People like us have our pride insulted daily, living in Korean society," said a Mr. Sin, referring to his international marriage as viewed by the Korean public. Sin runs a fruit store with his Vietnamese wife. "I hate how people [in our society] aren’t valued, and how everything is judged by money; that’s why I chose international marriage," he said, choosing to go against the grain. In one way, international marriage is an expression of struggle by men and women who have been pushed to the margins of the capitalist system to escape their marginalized lives. There is a body of research that sees those who have joined in international marriages as people who are courageously trying to realize their dreams by escaping society’s political, economic, and cultural oppression and its strict directives.

Indeed, most of the women who migrated to other countries through marriage are intelligent and proactive. The following is from a collection of writings from a Korean language program for foreign woman. It was written by a Filipina woman and in it you see she is aware of the historicity of capitalist globalization.

"Forty years ago, the Philippines was the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Asia. Korea? Where’s that? Aren’t they poor? We Filipinos should send those poor Koreans some money.

"Eight years ago Taiwan was the richest nation on earth. My friend from there said you would have to be crazy to marry a Korean man. Rumor has it that Korean men hit their women.

"Last year my friends in Japan and Taiwan said, ’You’re going to Korea to live with a Korean husband? We’re jealous! Does he have single friends? Send us pictures of actress Lee Young-ae.’"

"Twenty years from now, my daughter is going to say to her Israeli friend, ’Korea and Taiwan were rich when I was young.’ "

International marriage is closely related to capitalist globalization, so will not the answer be found in properly dealing with it the right way? As one Taiwanese academic puts it, international marriage can be a way of spreading globalization "from the ground up" if social movements are able to help these wives and husbands cultivate their own abilities.

You can see how this is happening if you look at the multicultural families in the farming regions that otherwise seem as far behind globalization as can be. "I may not know where the Philippines are," says a woman in Naju who has two Filipino daughters-in-law. "But looking at my daughters-in-law, I see how whether you’re light or dark or from the Philippines or Vietnam, there’s little difference from Koreans." Mr. Park, whose wife is from Cambodia, said that soon after getting married, he realized that women enjoy more rights in Cambodia than they do in Korea, so he struggles to free himself from his male-centered thinking to better accommodate his wife. We’re seeing changes in the way people know and understand each other, and it’s happening from the ground up.