Funereal weddings
2011-07-02 06:16 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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omonatheydidSlick, illegal brokering machine ensures steady supply of poor young Vietnamese brides for South Korean men, a Thanh Nien investigation finds
T., a 19-year-old woman from Kien Giang Province, at her wedding ceremony last month with a South Korean man
One day in early June, Phuong gets a call informing her that two men from South Korea will come to a café in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Phu District to meet Vietnamese women that they can marry.
Phuong, a 29-year-old woman from Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, hopes she will be selected by one of these two men and go abroad, just as her older sister did several years ago.
Five other hopeful women are waiting at the café when Phuong arrives. Besides them, there are six men and a woman from South Korea, and two Vietnamese women, all marriage brokers.
One of the Vietnamese brokers, identified only as N., wants to reject Phuong because she doesn’t belong to the women she would introduce (and get a commission for doing so). However, one of the South Korean brokers, Hwang, tells Phuong to stay after taking a closer look at her.
Soon after, the two South Korean men arrive, carrying plastic bags with copies of ID cards and household registrations of Vietnamese women.
The six Vietnamese women are quickly divided into two groups. Phuong and two others, 19-year-old T. from Kien Giang and S. from Tien Giang Province, are brought to Kim, a 40-year-old South Korean man.
The brokers introduce him, saying Kim works for some enterprise in South Korea and is paralyzed in one leg.
After the introductions, Kim decides to choose T. and she begins crying. It is difficult to say if they are tears of happiness. The South Korean broker, Hwang, checks her arms like inspecting cattle before purchase, and asks a woman to take her to a room for a complete checkup.
In the other group, a 30-year-old woman, known only as O., is selected by the other 53-year-old Korean wife-seeker. A woman claiming to be his younger sister says the Korean man has undergone several surgeries and lost his right thumb in one of them.
O. has been married earlier and has a seven-year-old son, but she says she will not take her son to South Korea with her new husband.
Few hours later, the two couples rent two rooms at a hotel in Tan Binh District for their “first night” a day before the wedding.
At dinner that day, O. says she is not worried at all because she has been married once, but T. bursts into tears when asked what she thinks about such a quick wedding.
Somber affairs
On the following day, two weddings are held at around noon at a restaurant on Hoa Binh Street in District 11. It is pouring outside.
The two brides, holding two old, dusty plastic wedding bouquets, stand at the entrance to welcome guests – a symbolic step because there are actually no guests besides the immediate family members of the brides and the brokers who are already there.
At 1:30 p.m., the ceremony begins with a short performance by the restaurant’s dancers. Then an emcee introduces the two couples walking on to the stage. T. doesn’t look around and walks sadly beside the groom, who is struggling to walk because of his paralyzed leg.
T.’s parents from Kien Giang are there in old clothes and slippers. The mother says the brokers set aside ten seats for them at the party but she didn’t invite anyone.
Each wedding ceremony takes just five minutes or so, and the “party” begins. T.’s parents and she herself don’t say anything or talk to her husband, because they don’t speak any Korean. T. and her parents don’t eat anything either, just sit with sad looks on their faces.
At 2 p.m., the party ends and the brides’ families return to their hometown in the Mekong Delta. The two couples and the brokers take a trip to the beach town of Vung Tau for a one-day honeymoon.
The following day, they return to HCMC and the grooms take a flight back to South Korea. They are expected to return in October to take their brides with them after completing all the procedures
Captive brides
After the wedding and honeymoon, T. and O. are taken to an apartment on Thoai Ngoc Hau Street in Tan Phu District and stay there, ostensibly to study Korean language and culture. In reality, they are strictly monitored and can only go out for one hour a day with a male chaperon.
The broker N. also stays in the apartment. She had become a bride herself in similar circumstances more than a month ago. While waiting to immigrate to South Korea, she is hoping to earn some money by introducing more women to the marriage racket.
N. calls Phuong just a few days after the weddings of T. and O., and takes her to meet the major brokers in the ring.
At a house in an alley off Binh Tan District’s Le Van Quoi Street, a man more than 60 years old, identified only as T., carefully checks Phuong’s ID card and asks her to bring her household registration documents as well.
“You look smart. Tell your relatives to supply documents. After getting married, you can help me to find more women who want to find Korean husbands and I will pay you,” he tells Phuong.
T. says around ten women are living there, waiting to be selected by South Korean men. “If you want to get a husband soon, you must ask for my help,” he says.
After a two-hour conversation, T. asks N. to take Phuong home to prepare her documents before coming to stay in the house.
N. says a woman has to pay T. VND300,000 for food besides brokerage fees of around VND6 million (US$292). “Your Korean husband will give you the money to pay them,” she reassures Phuong when the latter explains that she is poor, that the reason she wants to get married to a foreign husband is to escape poverty.
According to N., all the prospective brides will stay at T.’s house waiting to be selected. After the wedding, they will move to the apartment in Tan Phu District to study Korean language and wait for their husbands to take them abroad.
When Phuong asks what would happen if the husband does not turn up later to take his wife abroad, N. does not hesitate: “Just find another Korean husband then.”
Source: thanhniennews
T., a 19-year-old woman from Kien Giang Province, at her wedding ceremony last month with a South Korean man
One day in early June, Phuong gets a call informing her that two men from South Korea will come to a café in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Phu District to meet Vietnamese women that they can marry.
Phuong, a 29-year-old woman from Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, hopes she will be selected by one of these two men and go abroad, just as her older sister did several years ago.
Five other hopeful women are waiting at the café when Phuong arrives. Besides them, there are six men and a woman from South Korea, and two Vietnamese women, all marriage brokers.
One of the Vietnamese brokers, identified only as N., wants to reject Phuong because she doesn’t belong to the women she would introduce (and get a commission for doing so). However, one of the South Korean brokers, Hwang, tells Phuong to stay after taking a closer look at her.
Soon after, the two South Korean men arrive, carrying plastic bags with copies of ID cards and household registrations of Vietnamese women.
The six Vietnamese women are quickly divided into two groups. Phuong and two others, 19-year-old T. from Kien Giang and S. from Tien Giang Province, are brought to Kim, a 40-year-old South Korean man.
The brokers introduce him, saying Kim works for some enterprise in South Korea and is paralyzed in one leg.
After the introductions, Kim decides to choose T. and she begins crying. It is difficult to say if they are tears of happiness. The South Korean broker, Hwang, checks her arms like inspecting cattle before purchase, and asks a woman to take her to a room for a complete checkup.
In the other group, a 30-year-old woman, known only as O., is selected by the other 53-year-old Korean wife-seeker. A woman claiming to be his younger sister says the Korean man has undergone several surgeries and lost his right thumb in one of them.
O. has been married earlier and has a seven-year-old son, but she says she will not take her son to South Korea with her new husband.
Few hours later, the two couples rent two rooms at a hotel in Tan Binh District for their “first night” a day before the wedding.
At dinner that day, O. says she is not worried at all because she has been married once, but T. bursts into tears when asked what she thinks about such a quick wedding.
Somber affairs
On the following day, two weddings are held at around noon at a restaurant on Hoa Binh Street in District 11. It is pouring outside.
The two brides, holding two old, dusty plastic wedding bouquets, stand at the entrance to welcome guests – a symbolic step because there are actually no guests besides the immediate family members of the brides and the brokers who are already there.
At 1:30 p.m., the ceremony begins with a short performance by the restaurant’s dancers. Then an emcee introduces the two couples walking on to the stage. T. doesn’t look around and walks sadly beside the groom, who is struggling to walk because of his paralyzed leg.
T.’s parents from Kien Giang are there in old clothes and slippers. The mother says the brokers set aside ten seats for them at the party but she didn’t invite anyone.
Each wedding ceremony takes just five minutes or so, and the “party” begins. T.’s parents and she herself don’t say anything or talk to her husband, because they don’t speak any Korean. T. and her parents don’t eat anything either, just sit with sad looks on their faces.
At 2 p.m., the party ends and the brides’ families return to their hometown in the Mekong Delta. The two couples and the brokers take a trip to the beach town of Vung Tau for a one-day honeymoon.
The following day, they return to HCMC and the grooms take a flight back to South Korea. They are expected to return in October to take their brides with them after completing all the procedures
Captive brides
After the wedding and honeymoon, T. and O. are taken to an apartment on Thoai Ngoc Hau Street in Tan Phu District and stay there, ostensibly to study Korean language and culture. In reality, they are strictly monitored and can only go out for one hour a day with a male chaperon.
The broker N. also stays in the apartment. She had become a bride herself in similar circumstances more than a month ago. While waiting to immigrate to South Korea, she is hoping to earn some money by introducing more women to the marriage racket.
N. calls Phuong just a few days after the weddings of T. and O., and takes her to meet the major brokers in the ring.
At a house in an alley off Binh Tan District’s Le Van Quoi Street, a man more than 60 years old, identified only as T., carefully checks Phuong’s ID card and asks her to bring her household registration documents as well.
“You look smart. Tell your relatives to supply documents. After getting married, you can help me to find more women who want to find Korean husbands and I will pay you,” he tells Phuong.
T. says around ten women are living there, waiting to be selected by South Korean men. “If you want to get a husband soon, you must ask for my help,” he says.
After a two-hour conversation, T. asks N. to take Phuong home to prepare her documents before coming to stay in the house.
N. says a woman has to pay T. VND300,000 for food besides brokerage fees of around VND6 million (US$292). “Your Korean husband will give you the money to pay them,” she reassures Phuong when the latter explains that she is poor, that the reason she wants to get married to a foreign husband is to escape poverty.
According to N., all the prospective brides will stay at T.’s house waiting to be selected. After the wedding, they will move to the apartment in Tan Phu District to study Korean language and wait for their husbands to take them abroad.
When Phuong asks what would happen if the husband does not turn up later to take his wife abroad, N. does not hesitate: “Just find another Korean husband then.”
More than a third of South Korean fishermen and farmers who married in 2009 chose immigrant brides, some because they were unable to find local women prepared to lead a rural lifestyle, according to an AFP report.
According to the Ministry of Justice, more than 257,000 Vietnamese married foreigners or Vietnamese residing overseas between 1995 and 2010—over 80 percent of these individuals are women. Most of the foreign spouses are from Taiwan, the US, South Korea and China.
A survey conducted by the Vietnam’s Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs early this year found that only 7 percent of these couples married for love; the rest wed for financial reasons. Nearly 60 percent of marriages between Vietnamese women and foreign men were arranged by illegal brokers, according to the study.
Source: thanhniennews
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:50 pm (UTC)Oh gosh, this is just so sad.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:53 pm (UTC)and the babies may be cute /vietnamese have so nice gentle bone structures usually/ plus it may spread tasty vietnamese food in korea /actually there are mant pho places in seoul/
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:07 pm (UTC)it's a pretty sad practice because those women will never get a chance to even know their husbands or pick their husbands. It's really up to their fate/destiny/luck. Those who are lucky will get husbands who treat them proper and right but some of them get abused/whatever horror treatment you can think of and they don't have any rights to complain because technically speaking, they were paid for. ):
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:55 pm (UTC)a third!
i remember there was this daily kbs korean drama about a vietnamese bride. it was all so happy and nice and i remember thinking, no way in hell does that happen in reality :|
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:32 pm (UTC)I remember when Mir's father told him to make sure he found a wife in Seoul. Mir will have better marriage prospects then most farmers because of his life as and idol plus the fact that he is tall and handsome.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:36 pm (UTC)There isn't a quarantee every bride will end up happy or treated right.
I don't think or know that anyone in my family has or will do this; but, I know that my family would chastise him/her not to do it and just go out and date.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:01 pm (UTC)i have the though that foreigners tend to think VN is poor and hard to live
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:13 pm (UTC)I know that Vietnam is not completely rural and poor, there are cities, I know. lol
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:31 pm (UTC)I just remember that even in the cities, some Vietnamese has the mindset that marriage a foreigner is a good thing (like they are rich or their countries are better). I'm in NY now for my study and all the time my relatives (old ajuma) always urge me to marry an America husband here and stay. They all disappoint when i say i like only Asian though =))
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:18 pm (UTC)most of the case, Korean mens that marriage Vietnamese women are not well off either, the reason they search for a foreigner wife because they can't get themselves a Korean's wife (they were poor too, mostly farmer ...)
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 07:33 pm (UTC)I hope something changes about this foreign bride marriage. 7% do it for love? That's very depressing and saddening. And there isn't a quarantee the brides will be happy. It's all luck or fate.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 08:00 pm (UTC)I agree that I couldn't do leave my family, to marriage a stranger and live in a different country but then again who am I too judge just hope it works out for them :X
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 06:56 pm (UTC)