4 in 10 newly-wed wives in rural areas are immigrants

via Khmer NZ

07-06-2010

By Bae Ji-sook

Staff reporter

About four in 10 newly-wed males living in rural areas married foreign spouses, mostly from other Asian countries, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said Tuesday.

Wives are usually much younger than their husbands and many were suffering from financial difficulties, the authorities said.

A total of 8,569 males in suburban areas got married last year, of which 41 percent had migrant wives, mainly from Vietnam, China, the Philippines and other Asian countries.

Since Cambodia has recently banned its nationals from marrying Koreans, the number of Cambodian-Korean couples has significantly dropped.

Most of these migrant spouses entered Korea to be married, suggesting that the majority of the cases were pre-arranged by agencies, brokers or mutual friends.

Meanwhile, as of May last year, 167,090 foreigners married Koreans and among them, 41,417 were naturalized with Korean citizenship. About 81.1 percent of the marriages have taken place since 2000.

Ethic-Korean Chinese accounted for the lion’s share with 30 percent, followed by Vietnam with 20 percent, the Philippines with 6.6 percent, Japan at 4.1 percent, Cambodia down to 2 percent.

Wives were younger than their husbands by more than 10 years ― Cambodian brides on average were 17.5 years younger than their Korean spouses, followed by Vietnamese with an average 17 year-age gap.

They were introduced to their husbands through acquaintances or interracial matchmaking agencies.

About 3.2 percent ended up in divorce while 4 percent were widowed within an average of 4.7 years into their marriage.

They cited irreconcilable differences, financial difficulties, infidelity, abuse, domestic violence and other infractions as the cause for divorce.

A ministry official said migrant spouses, who are less informed of the local laws, easily become accused of causing the divorce though the liability is with their Korean spouses.

The ministry furthered the research by surveying 73,669 households of interracial marriages.

Most of the female spouses said the language barrier, economic difficulties and childrearing issues were their largest obstacles.

They said the longer they stayed in Korea, the loneliness would go away and communication levels would increase but their financial difficulties still linger.

Financial issues were indeed serious as 38.4 percent of them made between 1 million won and 2 million won a month and 21.3 percent made less than 1 million, compared to an average Korean household earning 3.3 million won.