Written by Cat Barton and Vong Sokheng
Friday, 21 March 2008
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.
“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.
Her story, told in a yet-to-be-released report by International Organization for Migration (IOM), highlights what is Cambodia’s newest export: brides.
In 2004, the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh issued 72 marriage visas to Cambodian women. By 2007, that figure had leapt to 1,759. A further 160 marriage visas were issued in the first month of 2008 alone, according to embassy statistics.
Monika – not her real name – is one of a several former brides of Korean men featuring in the IOM report “The Marriage Brokering System from Cambodia to Korea,” a copy of which was obtained by the Post.
The issue of young Cambodian women quitting the Kingdom for the South Korean heartland is worrying even the upper echelons of Cambodia’s political leadership.
On March 13, Prime Minister Hun Sen told high-ranking police officials at the Ministry of Interior’s annual congress that “the question to address now is the emerging mail-order bride business in Cambodia.”
He then ordered a crackdown on South Korean marriage agencies like Chanthin, which has now been closed down.
Chanthin was registered with the Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Economy and Finance and opened in September 2006. The agency was neither legal nor illegal as the existence of marriage agencies is not covered by existing legislation.
However, official matchmaking agencies such as Chanthin – which provides language lessons and stringently adheres to what rules there are in this shadowy sector – may not be the major problem. IOM’s new report suggests that “the vast majority of [Korean-Cambodian] marriages occur through an informal and exploitative broker-arranged process.”
The report explains how Korean men looking for a Cambodian bride can contact one of many – the exact number has not been established – marriage agents operating here. The agents recruit suitable women who are invited to meet with the broker and told to bring photos of themselves for scrutiny by potential husbands.
Korean men have begun to come to Cambodia on what the IOM report calls “marriage tours.” Such tours often last a mere four days, during which time the man gets married.
“Much of the matchmaking occurs in small restaurants of hotels located in or near Phnom Penh,” the IOM report says. “There, the men typically select a bride from as many as 100 who are made available.”
Srey La, 21, who last year married – and divorced six months later – a Korean man, said there were “a lot” of young women in Phnom Penh waiting for a Korean husband.
Srey La’s father paid a marriage broker $50 to arrange her marriage. She then went to live in a house in Chbar Ampeou, near Phnom Penh, where she stayed with other young Cambodian girls for a month. They were not allowed to leave the house during that period.
When Srey La married a 42-yea- old Korean man at a guesthouse in Kien Svay, her parents received money to cover their expenses and a wedding gift of $400.
“I felt afraid when I arrived at my husband’s house,” Srey La told IOM.
“I returned home because I was afraid of the family and I had many arguments with my husband, mostly about money. I only managed to send $300 to my family during the six months I was in Korea. My sister is married to a Korean man and she sent $1500,” she said.
Although it is difficult to discern where or whether there is an element of coercion in Cambodia’s growing marriage industry, it is clear that both sides suffer from overly high expectations and cultural misunderstandings, said John McGeoghan, IOM project coordinator and author of the report.
“There are usually false expectations on both sides and huge cultural and linguistic problems to overcome,” he told the Post.
According to the report, most Cambodian women who marry into South Korea are from rural areas, have little if any formal education and are an average of 21 years old.
"I felt afraid when i arrived at my husband's house... I returned home because i was afraid of the family and i had many arguments with my husband, mostly about money."
“Often the women have misguided expectations of what life may be like abroad; there is a lack of realistic information about life in Korea,” the reports says.
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.
According to the report, “so far, a few cases of abuse and domestic violence have come to light,” but “human trafficking has been far more difficult to identify.”
Naly Pilorge, director of local rights group Licadho, said her organization had received direct calls from South Korea from Cambodian women trapped in a marriage gone wrong.
“The problem with this form of trafficking is that it is easily presented as being good for society,” she said. “It can be cloaked as something that benefits Cambodia. But the common element and driving force of all forms of trafficking is money.”
And there is indeed money to be made in marriage. The average Korean groom will pay between $10,000 and $20,000 for his bride, of which approximately $1,000 will go to the bride’s family, and the rest to the broker who arranged the match.
“The marriage brokers are not just a Cambodian problem, it is a cross-border problem and everyone who is affected needs to pay attention to this,” said Pilorge.
The causes behind Cambodia’s spike in Cambodian-Korean marriages are complex. A 2007 crackdown on marriage brokers in Vietnam – which at its peak was sending 20,000 brides abroad each year – has raised concerns that the brokers have moved to Cambodia.
“A push-down, pop-up effect may be resulting in Cambodia becoming a new market,” the IOM report says.
The report urges the Cambodian government to “develop a clear policy for migrant marriages in order to discourage the potential trafficking of brides and possible abuse of exploitation in their destination country.”
Sar Kheng, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, told reporters this month at the launch of the anti-trafficking national awareness campaign that there have been some cases of human trafficking identified in the Cambodian marriage industry.
“We have to make people understand the danger of human trafficking in this area,” he said.
Korean embassy spokesman Kim Inkook said the embassy had “no particular opinion on this issue.”
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