kude.punny

The Last Letter Of A Vietnamese Bride In Korea

Huynh Mai and her husband on the wedding day.

The body with 18 broken ribs of a Vietnamese bridge named Huynh Mai was found in the basement of her husband’s house eight days after she was killed. This event, which was broadcast on August 9 on Korea’s KBS channel, shocked millions of Koreans.

Tragedy of girls with foreign marriages
When Huynh Mai came to Korea, she was locked up in the house and was not allowed to meet with the neighbours. She wanted to study Korean language but her husband didn’t agree. She was immediately beaten or insulted whenever she asked anything related to Korean language. After nearly two months in Korea, Huynh Mai was discouraged with the life in the strange land and she asked for her husband’s permission to return to Vietnam. The husband didn’t allow this and beat her to death. He trod on her body and broke 18 of Mai’s ribs. After killing his wife, the man ran away to Deachon in central Korea. On August 5 he called the owner of the house where he and his wife had lived in Cheonan and through the call Korean police found the man and arrested him.

An online newspaper, http://www.ohmynews.com, published part of a five-page letter in Vietnamese of the Vietnamese bride, 20, from Kien Giang province, expressing her feelings about her days in the Republic of Korea.

“I’ve tried a lot to become a good wife, a good mother. I want to have a happy family. I want to talk much to you. I, like other girls, want to treat my husband well, but why don’t you care about me? I desire to have a happy family and be a good wife but my simple dream hasn’t become true,” Huynh Mai said in her letter, dated June 25, 2007.

The letter was written before she died at her husband’s house in Munhoa Ward, Cheonan City, Korea. In the letter, she expressed her wish to talk much to her husband and to treat him well. The letter expressed the girl’s feelings when she couldn’t speak Korean language.

“If I can return to Vietnam, I will forgive you,” she wrote. Due to disagreements with her husband, Huynh Mai wanted to return to Vietnam just after two months living in Korea.

She couldn’t know that just in one day after she wrote this letter, she would be killed by her husband. Her body with 18 broken ribs was not found till eight days after her death.

In her five-page letter, Huynh Mai wrote: “I’m very sad because of my husband. When I came to Korea, I didn’t know how the life here was. When I’m sad, you should ask me the reasons. Why are you angry with me? You don’t know that when there are difficulties, we must discuss them with each other and you have to defend women. When I’m tired or face difficulties, I want to talk to you but each time you come home, you are not happy at all. Though I’m younger than you but we have to live for the connubial sentiment.”

“When you are sad you want to divorce me but it is impossible because my wish is a happy family. In a family, husband and wife must share happiness, sadness and difficulties. Though I’m younger than you, I still understand that we live together for affection,” she wrote.

Before going to Korea with her husband, Huynh Mai worked for a seafood processing, a wood processing company and was a farmer.

“When I was in Vietnam, my life was very hard. I worked hard but I still didn’t have enough money for living and I couldn’t save any money. I came here and I wish you could understand my circumstance.”

“I really want to return to Vietnam. I wish your dream will come true and you will live the right way. When I return to Vietnam I will recommence at the beginning and I will treat my parents well.”

The Foreigner Supporting Centre of Cheonan City translated and published this letter. This centre reported that Huynh Mai wrote this letter one day before her death and she put it in the drawer of a table. Her husband didn’t detect the letter. Her passport was torn up and thrown into a dustbin.

Director of the Foreigner Supporting Centre Kim Ki Shu said: “Nothing would have happened in this case if Huynh Mai had a place to come for consultancy.”

Mr. Kim said that in Huynh Mai’s case, the ‘match-making’ company was dissolved so she didn’t have any place to come. Cheonan authorities are building a centre providing translation services but a foreign bride who lived in the city for just two months like Huynh Mai couldn’t know about this service.

“A young wife who lives with an older husband will lead to misunderstandings with each other and the wife will want to return her country. However, it is dangerous for foreign brides who don’t have any support if their husbands want to divorce,” Mr. Kim said.

Cheonan’s police reported that on August 5, Huynh Mai’s husband, Jangamuke, was arrested. The man declared that Huynh Mai asked to return to Vietnam and he grew angry and killed her. Huynh Mai was cremated on July 18 and her ashes are being kept at Cheonan.

The online ohmynews newspaper reported that recently there were many maltreatment cases related to Vietnamese brides in Korea. They are badly treated, cast out from their husbands’ houses, forced to divorce, etc., which shows an alarming situation when Vietnamese girls go to Korea to get married.

The pain of the Vietnamese bride’s family


In a low-roofed house in Ngoc An hamlet, Ngoc Chuc commune, Giong Rieng district of Kien Giang province, Huynh Mai’s portrait was put on the altar which was spiralling up with smoke. Huynh Mai and her husband at their wedding

“Thinking of my daughter, my heart hurts like it is being cut by a sharp knife. I don’t know how to bring the ashes back home,” said Huynh Mai’s father.

At that time, her mother was in hospital waiting for a tumour operation. Her two younger brothers and sisters had to quit school from the 6th grade to work for living.

Huynh Mai’s father, Huynh Van Sau, 42, was still stunned by the death of his daughter. He didn’t understand why his daughter was murdered so cruelly.

Mr. Sau said that he had three children and Huynh Mai was the eldest. His family is very poor so Mai had to quit school after the 7th grade to help her parents earn a living. She worked for a seafood company in Ca Mau province at the age of 15 and then for a wood enterprise in Binh Duong province. On December 23, 2006, through match-makers, she got married to a Korean man.

Huynh Mai’s wedding party was organised at a restaurant with two other Vietnamese girls, who also got married to Korean men. Mr. Sau didn’t know the name of his Korean son-in-law. Through the interpreter he knew vaguely that his son-in-law’s name was Chan Shan Hoo or something like that and he was a taxi driver. The match-makers only allowed 15 members of the bride’s family to attend the wedding party and at the party the bridegroom gave the bride’s family an envelope of money.

After the party, the match-makers asked the bride’s family to show the envelope and they took US$200 from the total $600 in the envelope as match-making fees. The bride’s family also held a party without the bridegroom. Mai returned home one day after that and then she went to Kien Giang town for an interview. The money of the Korean bridegroom was enough for Mai’s family to travel from their house to the place where Mai stayed after the wedding.

On March 22, Huynh Mai flew to Korea and Mr. Sau didn’t expect that would be the last day he would see his daughter.

“Every 3-4 days my daughter called home but she didn’t complain anything about her life. Since late June she didn’t call any more so I didn’t know anything about her,” the father said.

On July 12, Kien Giang province’s police came to inform the family about Huynh Mai’s death. “I’m so shocked and outraged. We only hoped that she would find happiness there but…,” Mr. Sau said.

According to Mai’s family and neighbours, Mai was a good-natured and hard-working girl, who began to earn her living at the age of 14. Mai didn’t have one day of happiness in her life. She worked very hard and gave all of her salary to her parents. Before going to Korea, she cut rice to earn some money for her parents.

In the thatched house where Mr. Sau is living there are some photos of a small, beautiful Huynh Mai on the walls.

(Source: Tuoi Tre,

được đăng bởi kude.punny @ 08:26