Int'l conference brings together activists, wives
Women from across Asia have pledged to work together to protect the rights of women in marriages that cross international frontiers. The women met at a three-day conference organized by the Women Migrants Human Rights Center in Seoul, attended by close to 100 activists from Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Organized as a time for women from nations that "send" wives to other nations and their new home countries, the conference, titled "the Asian Women Migrants’ Strategic Discussion for Protection and Prevention of Human Trafficking in International Marriages" ended with participants pledging to meet yearly to discuss ways to deal with a rapid increase in international marriages that are largely characterized by a process of buying and selling, exchange information, and campaign for changes in the public's view about international marriage. The conference began with presentations of studies about the social disparity between migrant women and Korean men who enter into marriage together. "The average Mongolian woman who marries a Korean man is 24.9 years old, while her Korean husband has an average age of 44.5 years," noted one participant from Mongolia's National Violence Prevention Center. She went on to note that one third of Mongolian migrant women are university graduates but that overwhelmingly their husbands have very little education. One participant, from the League of Vietnamese Women, said it is "sad" that women leave Vietnam for Korea in search of a better life, only to "suffer from linguistic differences and domestic violence." Yi Hae-eung, an ethnic Korean from China currently in graduate studies at Ewha Womans [sic] University, noted that migrant women are frequently criticized for migrating in search of material wealth."The more marriage becomes commercialized, the more international marriage will become something that is discriminatory and inhuman," she said. Last year, 13.6 percent (43,121) of all marriages in Korea were between Koreans and foreigners. Chinese and Ethnic Korean women of Chinese citizenship accounted for 66.2 percent of the foreign women that married Korean men in 2005, followed by women from Vietnam (18.7%), Japan (4%), and the Philippines (3.2%). Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
