The Vietnamese woman, who suffered abuse at the hands of her husband and was impeded by a language barrier, decided to leave for her hometown on July 26, 2007, after one month of married life in Korea. But her intoxicated husband beat her to death.
In the ruling, the court said ``We saw the tragedy in which an older Korean male selected his wife in a matter of minutes then treated her like an imported product.''
Interestingly the Joongang Ilbo today has an article about a Vietnamese mother calling for the investigation of her daughter's death last year. The woman, married to an abusive Korean man, jumped or fell 14-floors to her death on February 6th. The case has been treated as a suicide in media reports, though her mother doesn't agree:
“I want to know exactly why and how she died. She is not the sort of person who would commit suicide,” Huynh said yesterday during a protest in front of the Gyeongsan police station, which is investigating the matter. During the protest, organized by local civic groups, the willowy 46-year-old broke into loud sobs, calling out Tran’s name.
The article is worth a read. Here's another excerpt:
Huynh said she refused to give permission [for cremation], but she did not know that Tran had already been cremated the day before.
Tran’s husband, Ha, was unavailable for comment yesterday. However, according to the local police, he said that he contacted the matchmaker after Tran’s death and was told by the broker that the mother had agreed to the cremation. During the investigation, police said, Ha told them his new wife did not adjust well to her new family and that she slept a lot and did not do her chores. The two, lacking a common language, had no way to communicate.
Just a week after Tran’s arrival in Korea, the couple filed for divorce and a short time later Tran bought a ticket for a flight back to Vietnam. A day later, she plunged to her death from the balcony.
“The circumstantial evidence indicated it was a suicide,” said a senior Gyeongsan police officer who refused to be named. Further forensic examination is impossible since the body was cremated at her husband’s request, he said. “We are still investigating. The case is not closed.”
Little is known about what happened during the six weeks before Tran died. Her diary, written from Jan. 17 to 29, revealed the typical problems in marriages between rural Korean men and women from developing countries.
“My husband slapped me across my face,” Tran wrote, “maybe because I didn’t do the chores the way he taught me. But I still don’t know what he’s talking about.”
The entries were mostly devoted to homesickness.
“I am counting the days before I go back to Vietnam. I miss my mother so much,” another entry reads. The diary ends on Jan. 29, a week before Tran died.
More information on that case is available here, as well as through a Google search.
1 comment:
This was a tough one to hear about. I wish the Korean media would take this topic up and turn it into one of their campaigns. If Korean men start getting a world-wide reputation as Vietnamese wife importers and beaters, we just might see it.
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