March 23, 2008
Cat Barton and Vong Sokheng investigate the growing Korean marriage tourism business.
Like many Cambodian girls, Monika had always dreamt of marrying her very own Prince Charming. So after hearing an advert on the radio, she registered with the Chanthin Group, a Korean marriage brokering company. Almost immediately, Monika found herself in Phnom Penh, being introduced to a selection of South Korean men, one of whom picked her to be his future bride.
After three months of studying Korean culture and language every Saturday, Monika went to Korea in June 2007 and lived with her husband and his family.
No prizes for guessing how that turned out.
“I went to Korea to earn money, not for marriage,” she said, hinting at why the marriage lasted only a matter of months. She is now divorced and back in Cambodia.
At the national level, relations between Cambodia and South Korea are moving nearly as fast. South Korea is Cambodia’s number one source of tourists. South Korean money is largely responsible for Cambodia’s current real estate boom. Many of Phnom Penh’s largest construction projects — Camko City, Golden Tower 42 — are products of Korean-Cambodian partnerships.
Although there is no evidence yet to suggest that these partnerships are as unstable as their mail-order-bride counterparts, it seems at least a little likely that they too could be marred by overly optimistic expectations. After all, what kind of Korean man shops for a mail-order bride?
Brides often believe the Korean men they will be marrying are rich, successful businessmen.
But according to the IOM in Seoul, the men looking for Cambodian brides are often poor, badly educated or even mentally handicapped and have usually had difficulty finding a wife among the ranks of South Korea’s ambitious younger female generation.
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