Anything we can do for these women?

I'm just talking out loud because I have no idea what resources already exist for the thousands upon thousands of foreign brides bought by Korean men every year. Women, and men, the world over marry for money and to better themselves, and plenty marry not out of love but rather out of need, so the plight of these women here isn't unique. Moreover, you'll find women all over the world willing to move to other countries to support themselves or send money back home, so that South Korea is exploiting its poorer neighbors isn't, again, unique. It just turns your stomach, though, to read stories like this:

The 44-year-old Hamyang County farmer, identified only by the surname Kim, married a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman last December. Kim has a speech impediment because of his mental disability and lived with his parents until he got married. According to Lee Sang-do, a police offer at Hamyang’s Seosang Police Precinct, it was the second time he had married a Vietnamese woman.

The marriage, however, didn’t last. Kim’s bride ran away a few days after the wedding. Not knowing why his wife left him, Kim decided to make the journey to Vietnam to find her. Despite his mental disability, on Oct. 16 he took a bus to Incheon International Airport and boarded a plane to Vietnam.

Unable to speak Vietnamese, he quickly ended up on the streets. He was found by Vietnamese police last Saturday night, after two days in the country.

It turned out his wife is still in Korea, although the article makes no mention of what did, and will, happen to her. How desperate a situation do you need to be in to sell yourself to a disabled man in rural South Korea? How about the man's family who had no qualms about letting their 44-year-old man marry a 20-year-old woman when he obviously couldn't provide for her or take care of her? And who knows what will happen to her now that her visa is in jeopardy.

According to a New York Times article from last year, in 2005 marriages to foreigners accounted for 14% of all new marriages. The number is higher in rural areas, for example, in Hampyeong county where 37.6% of marriages were international in 2004. While that Joongang Ilbo article says that "104,290 foreign women had married Korean men as of June," it doesn't put that in context or give a starting date for that figure. It becomes a little tricky because during the Vietnam War some 300,000 Korean soldiers and staff brought back Vietnamese wives, a figure that seems really high. An estimated 5,000 Vietnamese women marry a South Korean man every year and settle in Korea, but as you can imagine not many of them are happy. 3,665 international marriages ended in divorce in 2007, and there are a couple recent shocking stories involving Vietnamese brides and their suspicious deaths. Earlier this year a man in Daejeon was given a "relatively heavy punishment" of 12 years in prison for beating his 19-year-old Vietnamese bride to death. And in February a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman fell to her death from an apartment building, and though her death was ruled a suicide---and her 46-year-old Korean husband had her body cremated before any forensic investigation could be done---the woman's diary and other circumstantial evidence suggests homicide. Remember that earlier in the year a KT editorial started a profile on these two cases with the following introduction:

One killed herself. Another was beaten to death. A third was divorced after her duty as a surrogate mother was fulfilled.

No, these are not stories about ill-fated black women before slavery was prohibited in the United States.

There was a Joongang Ilbo opinion piece in May titled "End the marriage industry" which implores South Korea to end the trade of immigrant women, citing among other things the staggering discrimination foreigners face here. The piece concludes:

A country is globally rejected or respected for its policies and behavior towards women. Korea must legislate against the business of buying and selling foreign wives.
The government should immediately crack down on this shameful practice.
At the same time, the government must grant quick citizenship to the foreign wives already living here so that they can have full equal rights under the law.
It is time for Korea to protect its minority citizens.

And it's my duty to repost the following banner any time a story like this comes up. It was hanging in Jeollabuk-do, and advertises that Vietnamese women won't run away. Rather ironic when we consider today's story.