I saw over 4 TV programs that deal with ‘International marriage.’ Especially nowadays beautiful women from Uzbekistan are famous. There is stereotype that women there are all pretty and sexy because of some of youngsters on TV show, “Beauties’ Talk.” What I saw was over hundred men who are in their 40′s, from rural communities arrived at Uzbeckistan and had 15 blind date a day. Each meeting takes exactly 15 minutes and a couple is supposed to be matched in few days. A man and the woman have marrige ceremony there and come to Korea for good. They were smiling but I don’t see their clear future. I was sorry for them and their children. There are some articles that women from other countries left home without saying anything and her husband even people around her know anything about it. I guess she was suffering from lonliness, missing her family, and having melancholia. Marriage is not a easy decision because it includes our future life. Yet 15minutes and getting marry with a person from defferent country whom they never seen each other before? I don’t think this is suppoesed to happen. The more international marriage rates go up the more their divorce rates go down as well. We have to consider this seriousness. What do you see?
The rate of domestic violence is very high in international marriage couple. Wives from other countries, usually from developing countries, don’t have much power in their relationship with Korean husbands because they don’t have anyone who support them in Korea and they don’t know the lauguage of Korea. Also their identities are week in Korea because it’s new environment and culture for them.
I’m not saying that so international marriage is bad, but it sould be very carefully considered especially when the language problem is not solved.
I saw one TV show about international marriage. According to that show, there are many business men who want to get married with foreign women these days. The main reason is that their children will be able to speak two languages and that’s going to save the money. While watching that show, I could feel Koreans’ high enthusiasm about educaion one more time. Of course, there might be a lot of reasons but I was very shocked that this could be one of them.
I can hardly imagine a woman who would be flattered when she heard a man say, “I’m marrying you so my children can be bilingual for as cheaply as possible!”
Doubtless, there are good economic reasons why some women would be willing to marry a man they don’t know; Korean girls used to do the same with American soldiers. (And, I’m told, some still do, if they’re poor enough and/or desperate enough to leave Korea. My fiancée is a member of an International Couples web cafe somewhere or other, and says that there are always a few “crazy” girls like that who have married one or two soldiers and divorced them soon after, discovering that they really couldn’t get along.)
One of the things I think is worth discussing is the differences in the idea of marriage between societies. My father didn’t marry till he was 35 and it looks like I’ll do the same. This is no big deal in our culture: it’s better to find someone you really want to marry than to just get married because you’re a certain age, we think. I think Koreans are starting to be more flexible about when they marry, though still not very, right? (I have friends around 30 whose parents pressure them to hurry up and get married, etc.)
But for women in Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and so on, marriage can be a way of achieving more economic or social stability in their lives (and for their families).
Da Eun, here’s a very honest question: is domestic violence more common among rural intercultural marriages in Korea than among rural monocultural marriages? (In other words, are rural Korean men less likely to be violent to Korean wives than foreign wives?) It’s an honest question: I know that when I lived in the countryside, I saw some things in public (and heard neighbours’ fights in private) that shocked me very deeply. My response as a Canadian would be to break up the fight between a man and a woman, or call the police to prevent domestic violence — since some people do get killed either out of passion, or by accident, during such fights — but police and other neighbors or bystanders didn’t seem to be willing to intervene, and told me to mind my own business.
Anyway, if you know of any statistics, it’d be worth considering.
As for my fiancée and I, I can agree that intercultural marriages are not for everyone. You have to be very patient, and willing to put up with some things that you don’t, and may never, understand, because there’s personal differences, and common gender differences, and then cultural differences too! I wouldn’t be surprised if most international marriages fail for reasons that wouldn’t necessarily cause monocultural marriages to fail, if you add up all the small differences and miscommunications!
But I think the idea that the divorce rate in Korea is rising because of international marriages is unlikely: the divorce rates are rising for Korean-Korean marriages at a much higher rate, and probably have to do with all kinds of changes going on in Korean culture in general, as well as older Korean attitudes and practices regarding marriage.
(I knew a few older women in Jeonbuk who told me they didn’t really feel love toward their husbands; that the match had been made by someone else, and that they felt like cooks and housekeepers more than they felt like wives and lovers. I can easily imagine some of them divorcing once their children are old enough to live independently, if social changes make that imaginable and economically feasible for them. And I’m not exactly sure it’s a bad thing, if they’re unhappy and didn’t freely choose their husbands themselves. Marriage is hard enough when you’ve chosen your spouse!)