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Vietnam Moves To Protect Women In Overseas Marriages

Several Vietnamese wives in Seoul at a week-end get-together

The Vietnam Women’s Union plans to set up 40 information and legal advice centers to spread awareness of the risks involved in illegally-brokered overseas marriages.

The US$3.5 million project, to be run with the Vietnam Culture and Women's Center in South Korea, aims to “mitigate the negative impact of matchmaking operations” that are often profitable but illegal, reported Vietnam News Agency (VNA).

The program was expected to support nine similar existing facilities and serve about 15,000 women over the next five years, VNA reported.

Vietnam has become a popular destination for bachelors from South Korea and other Asian countries searching wives, often on week-long arranged trips that include medical checkups, visa procedures and speedy honeymoons.

The commercial match-making operations have stirred anger amid reports of potential brides being paraded and humiliated before their suitors.

Worse have been reports of the isolation and abuse suffered by many women in their new homes.

Concern over the practice of Vietnamese women, most from poor backgrounds, wedding wealthy foreigners through illegal brokers heightened after the murder of one such bride in the home of her South Korean husband.

She was found with 18 broken ribs earlier this month. Her husband has been arrested.

Excerpts from a letter kept by the woman, a former rice farmer and factory worker, describing her sadness and loneliness in South Korea were published across the Vietnamese media.

The head of a parliamentary committee on social issues, Truong Thi Mai, said Vietnam should consider changing the rules on foreign marriage.

According to the South Korean National Statistics Office, the number of Vietnamese brides in South Korea totaled over 10,000 last year, up 74 percent from the previous year, with most married to farmers and fishermen.

In South Korea, thousands of agencies now offer marriage tours to China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, often subsidized by rural authorities battling declining populations.

The international marriage market has been fuelled by a preference for sons in parts of Asia, exacerbated by sex-screening technology for pregnant women, which has left proportionally more bachelors fighting over fewer women.

Source: Agencies

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