Korea Herald (South Korea)
A few years ago, pictures of a South Korean man standing before a lineup of more than a dozen young ladies in a room at a Southeast Asian city where he was visiting to choose his future bride shocked government authorities and human rights groups here. Social censure here and in Southeast Asia apparently could not stop such ugly practices.
In Cambodia, a local marriage agency representative was jailed for 10 years on human trafficking charges and the Phnom Penh government recently issued a temporary ban on brokered marriages between Cambodian girls and Korean men. As demands remain high on either side for brokered international marriages, however, “group interviews” have continued in Vietnam and Cambodia as local agencies somehow secured connivance of local officials, according to news dispatches.
Another serious problem, aside from the inhumane methods of introducing local girls to visiting Koreans, is that the potential brides are rarely provided with sufficient and correct information about the men. In one tragic case, a Vietnamese woman married a 47-year-old Korean living near Busan without being informed that he had psychiatric treatment 57 times over the previous eight years. After 10 days of living together, the husband stabbed his young bride to death, allegedly due to his mental illness.
The immigration authorities at the Justice Ministry and officials at the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs are preparing measures to end inadequate practices of introducing potential partners and promote the comfortable settlement of “multicultural” families. But they should have done such work much earlier, as the number of immigrants through marriage has reached 130,000 and many of them have experienced different kinds of troubles.
Closer watch over marriage agencies is necessary to ensure that they abide by not only immigration procedures but social customs so as not to sully the national image. Legislative steps should be speeded up to provide proper orientation for men making overseas trips in search of foreign brides and to require them to furnish correct information about themselves to potential spouses.
In Cambodia, a local marriage agency representative was jailed for 10 years on human trafficking charges and the Phnom Penh government recently issued a temporary ban on brokered marriages between Cambodian girls and Korean men. As demands remain high on either side for brokered international marriages, however, “group interviews” have continued in Vietnam and Cambodia as local agencies somehow secured connivance of local officials, according to news dispatches.
Another serious problem, aside from the inhumane methods of introducing local girls to visiting Koreans, is that the potential brides are rarely provided with sufficient and correct information about the men. In one tragic case, a Vietnamese woman married a 47-year-old Korean living near Busan without being informed that he had psychiatric treatment 57 times over the previous eight years. After 10 days of living together, the husband stabbed his young bride to death, allegedly due to his mental illness.
The immigration authorities at the Justice Ministry and officials at the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs are preparing measures to end inadequate practices of introducing potential partners and promote the comfortable settlement of “multicultural” families. But they should have done such work much earlier, as the number of immigrants through marriage has reached 130,000 and many of them have experienced different kinds of troubles.
Closer watch over marriage agencies is necessary to ensure that they abide by not only immigration procedures but social customs so as not to sully the national image. Legislative steps should be speeded up to provide proper orientation for men making overseas trips in search of foreign brides and to require them to furnish correct information about themselves to potential spouses.
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