WUNRN
United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP) facilitates a stronger and more coordinated response to human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam).
UNIAP-Cambodia Office
Cambodia-Korea Marriage Brokering
Marriage Brokering of Cambodian women to Korean and Taiwanese men has recently received a lot of public attention. According to a recent IOM Report, marriage visas issued by the Korean Embassy in Cambodia have increased by over 500% in the last 4 years.
Table 1: Marriage Visas Issued by Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh 2004 – 2007
[Table taken from IOM Report (attached) page 2]
|
Year |
Number of Visas issued |
|
2004 |
72 |
|
2005 |
151 |
|
2006 |
365 |
|
2007 |
1759 |
|
2008 |
January only 160 |
|
|
Total : 2 347 |
Such a dramatic increase in marriage visas has sparked widespread concern. A documented increase in marriage visa does not, in itself, automatically prove that there is vast problem of trafficking for marriage from Cambodia to Korea. However, it does give rise to the need to further investigate the marriage recruitment practices and institute further protection mechanisms to ensure that Cambodian women marrying foreigners are not being forced, deceived or exploited.
There are concerns about the unbalanced power dynamic involved with men from developed countries traveling to a poorer country and offering money for a wife and also concerns that current practices used by marriage brokers are taking advantage of this financial differential between the two parties and making substantial profit. As with many issues involving the this type of unbalanced financial power dynamic between two parties, the concerns need to be thoroughly considered and Government efforts are needed to minimize or eliminate the increased bargaining power gained from this unbalanced power dynamic. This is particularly a difficult challenge in relation to marriage to foreigners – the Government need to address the unbalanced power dynamic and ensure the protection of Cambodian women without diminishing their opportunities and freedom of choice.
Following the release of the IOM report, the Royal Government of Cambodia has temporarily banned all marriage to foreigners until it has developed alternative procedures to address this issue. The Government of Korea has also responded, indicating their perspective that the cases described do not meet the UN definition of human trafficking. Please continue reading below for the many perspectives of this complex situation.
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Women Heading to S
Korea To Wed Raise Trafficking Concerns
Cambodia Daily –Friday, March
21, 2008
By Emily Lodish and Kuch Naren
The number of Cambodian women
heading to overseas to marry South Korean men is sky-rocketing, with a 500
percent increase in marriage licenses doled out from the South Korean embassy
between 2006 and 2007, according to the international Organization for
Migration.
While the exponential increase
does not necessarily indicate proportional growth in trafficking or
abuse-marriage brokerage agencies were legal until very recently when Prime
Minister Hun Sen ordered all such companies closed earlier this month__ it has
raised substantial concern among those working to combat trafficking.
Large profits are being made by
brokerage agencies, such as the high-profile Nave wedding agency from South
Korea where, IOM Project Coordinator John McGeoghan said Thursday, men pay up
to $20,000 for a bride whose family might see $1,000 of that money if they’re
lucky.
“The marriages happen quickly,
and lots of money is being made,” he said.
“Where you have this happening in the informal sector without government
regulation, you must have abuses or exploitation.”
“There’s mot much evidence of
trafficking…But it’s a red flag of some kind,” McGeoghan said, adding that the
brides are particularly vulnerable.
They tend to be young at 20 or
21 years of age, illiterate, and from impoverished backgrounds. Most lack the
full knowledge of what life will be like on the other side and don’t realize
they are likely to be working on a farm much like they left, picking vegetables.
The men are usually blue-collar
farmers or industrial workers in their 39s who are losing out in the fierce
competition for brides among an increasingly urban population.
For may potential brides, it’s
a rational choice to better their station in life__ though perhaps not one
borne entirely of free will with parents enthusiastically endorsing the idea
and standing to benefit from money their daughters promise to send home.
“They’re watching Korean soap operas…and
they don’t realize that they will be living in a rural area. There are cultural
differences, language differences,” McGeoghan said.
“It could work out fine, but we
are now seeing cases where that isn’t so…and what happens on the other end if
it doesn’t work out?” he asked adding that more research needs to be done into
other forms of coercion and deception that might be at play.
The South Korean embassy
reported that 1,759 couples sought marriage licenses in 2007, and IOM said that
in the previous year, only 365 licenses were given. In 2005, the embassy gave
15 licenses and only 72 in 2004.
Another reason behind the
increase could be that some brokerage agencies have been pushed in from
Vietnam, either as a result of a government g=crackdown or, conversely, growing
competition between agencies in Vietnam, he added.
“It’s all part of
globalization, the free movement of goods, services and people,” he said, “it’s
a symptom of the opening up of Cambodia.”
One reason there is no evidence
of systemic exploitation in South Korea could be because the spike in numbers
is still so new, he added.
In Taiwan, for instance, where
men have sought Cambodian brides for many years, abuse is rampant, according to
Nop Sarin Sreyroth, secretary general for the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center.
She said there are an estimated
5,219 Cambodian brides living there, the majority of whom she said have
suffered some form of abuse.
CWCC interviewed 21 Cambodian
brides on a recent trip to Taiwan and Nop Sarin Sreyroh said that two had been
sold outright to restaurants where they were being exploited for labor and kept
against their will. Most other reported some form of sexual abuse, such as
being forced to have sex with a member of their new household who was not their
husband.
Nop Sarin Sreyroth said that
about 90 percent of the brides were from Kompong Cham province, something she
attributed to the fact that women there are thought to be particularly
beautiful.
These marriages were largely
negotiated by individuals, rather than large agencies, and men typically paid
between $10,000 and $20,000 for a bride, while brides reported seeing as little
as $300 of that money, she said.
Nop Sarin Sreyroth said the
phenomenon has been decreasing in Taiwan __something she attributed to
education efforts in Cambodia, but others say is due to Cambodia’s one-China
policy, which has significantly curtailed transactions with Taiwan.
Kristy Fleming, a technical
adviser at the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, voiced concern
Thursday over the “unbalanced power dynamic between the men from developed
countries, like Cambodia, and the mainly disadvantaged women they encounter on
the other side of the equation.
“The government needs to
address the unbalanced power dynamic and ensure the protection of Cambodian
women without diminishing their opportunities and freedom of choice,” she wrote
by e-mail.
Women’s Affairs Ministry
Secretary of State Yu Ay, who heads the government’s anti-trafficking task
force, said Thursday that she is very concerned about the growing numbers of
brides flocking to South Korea and that the government has already begun taking
action.
“Prime Minister Hun Sen shut
down all the Korean marriage companies. We still have some that are not formal,
who came to Cambodia and are not registered,” she said.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng, to
who You Ay’s task force answers, said in early March that he had personally
revoked the licenses of two South Korean companies registered in Cambodia since
2006.
“We cannot allow such
businesses in our country,” he said.
“the Understanding of our
citizens is very poor. They hear the announcement and they just think about
money… It’s a kind of clear pattern of trafficking,” Sar Kheng added.
Officials at the South Korean
embassy were reticent to speak on the issue, but Second Secretary Kim In-kook
said the increase alone is not grounds for concern.
“An increase does not
necessarily mean good or bad,” said Kim, who declined to comment further.
Ros Chivy, who is in charge of
administering visas, at the South Korean embassy expressed concern that the
potential brides, most of whom are poor and illiterate, could be vulnerable to
exploitation, but said that rigorous interviews take place to ensure the
marriages are in good faith.
Most potential brides claim to
be able to handle life in South Korea and say they ‘just want to find a good
future,’ she said.
“If she gives me a wrong
answer, I would say no,” Ros Chivy said, adding that she doesn’t deny licenses
very often.
McGeoghan said the embassy
closely monitors the licensing process and that some agencies are working in
South Korea to assist foreign brides.
But even so, he said there
needs to be more awareness raising among families in Cambodia about what life
in Korea is really like __the good and the bad __as well as language and
pre-departure orientation a process he called “taking out the risk element,”
More counseling in Korea is
needed for the foreign brides, and a “safety net for those who decide to leave,
he said, adding that there is no funding at present to repatriate brides
who express the whish to do so.
With heightened pre-departure
training, the numbers of brides might no necessarily decrease, he said, but of
the marriages that do follow through, more are likely to work out in the end
with realistic expectation on both sides. “It might just become a more
attractive process,McGeoghan said.
Phnom Penh Post March 21 –April
3, 2008
By Cat Barton and Vong Sokheng
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 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
2007and 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 Cambodian’s newest export: brides.
In 2004, the South Korean embassy
in Phnom Penh issued 72 marriage visas to Cambodian women. By 2007, the figure
had leapt to 1,759. A further 160 marriage visas were issued in the first month
of 2008 alone, according to embassy statistics.
|
No. of marriage visas issued by South Korean embassy |
|
|
2004 |
72 |
|
2005 |
151 |
|
2006 |
365 |
|
2007 |
1,759 |
|
2008 (January) |
160 |
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 Korea 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 Chantin which provides language lesson 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 them 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 ther 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 Phnomm Penh, where she stayed with other young Cambodian girls for
a month. They were not allowed to leave the house during the period.
When Srey La married a 42-year-old
Korean man at a guesthouse in Kien Svay, her parents received money to cover
their expense 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 argumdnt with my husband, mostly about
money. I only mnaged 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 $1,500” 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
expections and cultural misunderstanding, 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
of 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.
“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 the 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 ambitions younger female generation.
According to the report, “so
far, a few cases of abuse and dosmestic violence have come to light,” but
“human trafficking has been fare 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. Buth 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 arraged the match.
“The marriage brokers are not
just a Cambodian problem, it is a cross-border problem and every one 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 monthe at the launch of
the Anti-trafficking national awareness campaign that there have been some
cases of human trafficking identified in he Cambodian marriage industry.
“We have to make people
understand the danger of human trafficking in this are,” he said.
Korean embassy spokesman Kim
inKook said the embassy had “no particular opinion on this issue.”
South Korea Embassy
Suspends Marriage Visas
The Cambodia Daily April 3,
2008
By Emily Lodish
Following the release of an
International Organization for Migration report highlighting the vulnerability
of Cambodian brides migrating to South Korea in increasing numbers, the South
Korean embassy in Phnom Penh has announced the indefinite suspension of
marriage visas.
“Recently, Cambodian
authorities deferred processing relevant procedures for international marriages
between Cambodian women and foreign men,” Kim in Kook, second secretary at the
South Korean embassy, wrote by e-mail Wednesday evening.
“Accordingly, the Embassy of
the Republic of Korea to Phnom Penh suspended issuing F-2 visas (residence visas)
to Cambodian nationals who wish to marry Korean men,” he said, declining to
comment further.
Women’s Affairs Ministry
Secretary of State You Ay said Wednesday evening by telephone that the
Cambodian government decided as to march 29 to stop issuing the necessary
papers for Cambodian brides to travel to South Korea, and urged the South
Korean embassy to cooperate.
“In order to prevent human
trafficking through marriage, we have temporarily stopped all visas for
Cambodian ladies to get married to foreign men, “You Ay said, adding that she
was not sure whether the suspension applied to nations other than South Korea.
“It is the right of the people
to marry, and we are not opposed to this, but we need more education, awareness
in the family and a legal framework,” she said.
IOM Project Coordinator John
McGeoghan said Wednesday that he welcomed suspension as a “good move until
there is an improved system in place to reduce the vulnerability of the women
traveling over.”
“It would seem that the report
had the desired effect,” he added.
The IOM report, entitled “The
Marriage Brokerage System from Cambodia to Korea” note that 1,759 marriage
visas were issued in 2007, up from only 72 in 2004. More than 400 have been
issued so far in 2008, according to South Korean embassy.
In addition to the vulnerably
of the Cambodian brides, most of whom are poor and illiterate, the report
describes how most marriages are arranged hastily by brokers who stand to make
large profits. While no systematic exploitation has been reported, a few
isolated cases of abuse have raised what McGeoghan called a “red flag.”
You Ay said a Wednesday meeting
between officials from the ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs and Women’s
Affairs was held to discuss how to develop a legal framework and otherwise
strengthen procedures for women who “get married with foreign men.”
In addition, she said that
three registered South Korean marriage brokerage agencies have been closed
down.
For Better or Worse:
Migrating Through Marriage
The Cambodia Daily April 4,
2008
By Emily Lodish and Kuch Naren
KROCH CHHMAR DISTRICT, Kompong
Cham province- Kek Tun picked nervously at the pink polish on her toenails as
she recalled in hushed tones how full of hope she was after first meeting her
now-ex-husband from South Korea.
“He was friendly, and it seemed
we understood each other clearly even though we spoke different language. He
did not seem different from other men,” the 18-year-old said last week, sitting
on the floor of her stilt house in rural Kompong Cham, her face flush from a
morning of drying tobacco leaves under the hot sun.
“He promised to take me to
South Korea and help my family to have a better life,” she said.
The pair first met at a Phnom
Penh restaurant that served both Korean and Khmer food. They had a metered
conversation alongside anther couple through translation provided by the
“auntie,” or matchmaker, who had first approached Kek Tun at her Phnom Penh
garment factory in 2006 to see if she was interested in marrying abroad.
Kek Tun, who has an older
sister who is happily married in Soth Korea, dressed casually in jeans and
T-shirt for the meeting. She wore a little makeup.
Among the question he asked was
whether she was a virgin – a question what did not seem odd to Kek Tun,
considering they were trying to learn about one another’s background.
“I also asked him whether he
was single or already married,” she said.
She tried kimchi – a classic
Korean dish of pickled cabbage that she came to tolerate, then like, over her
six months in South Korea – but didn’t care for its strong taste.
Kek Tun wasn’t give much time
to consider the marriage proposal, and after an abbreviated wedding ceremony a
few days later where her father received $300, she began trying to learn about
life in Korea through books, friends and watching soap operas on TV even though
she couldn’t understand the dialogue.
A month later, once the
marriage visa was procured, she flew with another Cambodian bride to South
Korea where her first permissions of bustling Seoul, she said, exceeded her
wildest dreams “Seoul was so big and modern,” she said.
It did not take long, however,
for Kek Tun to figure out that she had made a terrible mistake.
Her husband had told her the
she wouldn’t have to work, but she soon found herself laboring in strawberry
fields all day. She said she never saw any money. She was banned from using the
phone and not allowed out of the house unaccompanied.
The abuse worsened. Her husband
would force sex upon her two to three times a week, and beat her when she
resisted.
“He would slap, hit and kick
me,” she said. “I was like a slave.”
After weeks of arguing, Kek Tun
won her divorce and flew home on her sister dollars.
Now, ashamed to be divorced and
the victim of abuse, Kek Tun has been too embarrassed to tell even her own
father about her experience. Choyy Hoy, 49, thinks his daughter left South
Korea after an unsettling argument with sister-in-law.
“I also feel unhappy to see her
return. I expected her to have happy life like her sister,” he said. “But I
also support her. It depends on her will. If she’s unhappy in South Korea, she
should return,” he added.
Kek Tun said it’s nice to be
back with her family, but the farm work is grueling and keeps them poor. More
than anything, she said, she wants another chance to marry a South Korean man
and return to his homeland.
“I expect the second man to be
kind to me and give me the chance to make a lot of money,” she said.
Not enough research has been
done into the issue to know whether the abuse Kek Tun experienced is unique
among the thousands of Cambodian brides in South Korea, but it is enough to
cause concern, said John McGeoghan, a project coordinator at the International
Organization for Migration.
A new IOM report titled “The
Marriage Brokerage System from Cambodia to Korea” charts the sharp rise in
numbers of Cambodian brides going to South Korea – from 72 in 2004 to 1,759 in
2007.
The report highlights the
marriages that tend to happen quickly, with brokers and parents standing to
make large profits, as well as the vulnerability of brides such as Kek Tun who
are poor and under-informed about what life will be like in South Korea.
For most overseas brides,
dissatisfaction in South Korea is likely not the result or abuse, but simply
the result of unmet expectations relating to what kind of area they would be
living in or how much money they would be earning. Pre-departure training could
help prevent conflicts that result from such unmet expectations.
“Their reasons for going are
mostly economic, and this can result in conflict when reality differs from
their expectations,” McGeoghan said by telephone earlier this week.
Kek Tun’s unwavering desire to
marry a South Korean man and live in his homeland, now undoubtedly stripped of
its romanticism, lays bare the draw of an overseas marriage as a means to
migrate, he said.
“It is migration form
remittances. Many case hopefully have loving relationships… But that isn’t
always the case,” he added.
Kim in_Kook, second secretary
at the South Korean embassy, who declined to update his remarks for this story,
said late last month that an increase in marriages alone is not cause for
concern, and that the embassy conducts rigorous interviews to ensure that the
marriages are in good faith.
“An increase does not
necessarily mean good or bad,” he said. But on Wednesday, at the urging of the
Cambodian government the South Korean embassy announced that it had suspended
the issuance of marriage visas until further notice, The Cambodian government
announced Thursday that it has stopped allowing marriages to men from any
foreign country.
Ministry of Women’s Affairs
Secretary of State You Ay said Wednesday that the government has already begun
discussing how to better strengthen the procedures by which Cambodian women get
married to foreign men.
“We need education, awareness
in the family and a legal framework,” she said. Women’s Affairs Minister Ing
Kantha Phavy said that ideally she would like to see women remain in the
country and become productive citizens, but she also considers it a priority of
the ministry to ensure that Cambodian women have the freedom to choose.
“I believe that the work of the
Ministry of Women’s Affairs is to ensure that Cambodian women have enough
information to make informed choices about their personal life, for example,
who they marry,” Ing Kantha Phavy wrote by e-mail.
“We have been researching the
problem [of migration through marriage], possible ways to help these vulnerable
women and exploring options regarding cultural and language instruction before
departure,” she said.
Still, even with all the
knowledge, many are simply willing to take the risk. The Cambodian Women’s
Crisis Center estimates there are currently more that 5,000 Cambodian women in
Taiwan who migrated through marriage, some of whom have been trafficked
outright and most of whom are enduring some form of abuse.
Chheang Vannath, 24, was savvy
from the beginning, before being plucked from a lineup at a guesthouse by her
Taiwanese husband back in 2002.
“I was very nervous when I was
told I was selected because I was scared I would be trafficked, but I wanted to
try it,” she said.
When She and her new husband
stopped in Vietnam for a three-day honeymoon along with two other couples, she
resisted having sex with him.
“I was afraid he would leave me
in Vietnam, I heard that happened to another girl,” she said, adding that
someone from the brokerage agency ultimately intervened, convincing her
otherwise.
For five year she weighed her
option in Taiwan. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job,
but she was making money. She was the breadwinner.
It was only after a
particularly heinous act of abuse, during which her husband beat her with an
iron rod and the police intervened, that she finally decided to leave.
Now, Chheang Vannath says, she
is happy back at her home in Prey Veng province’s Komchay Mear district and plant
to marry a man from her village who she grew up with.
“He knows all about my past and
says he doesn’t mind,” she said, adding that she hopes to gain employment as a
translator for businessmen who speak Chinese – a language she learned to speak
during her time abroad.
As for Kek Tun, she too hopes
to find love the second time around – or at least a cost-benefit equation that
works out to her advantage.
“Not every South Korean man is
bad. Look at my brother-in-law,” she said, gesturing to pictures of her
sister’s wedding hanging on the wall.
“Love is very important for a
couple. Otherwise, it hard to live together,” she said.
Her face, flushed at the
beginning of the interview, had returned to its pale complexion.
Bride-To-Be Bemoans
Wedding Suspension
The Cambodia Daily April 9,
2008
By Emily Lodish and Kuch Naren
When the 40-year-old
Cambodia-American bride-to-be landed in Phnom Penh at 10:30 am Tuesday, she was
flying high.
There to greet her was
the man she had been in love with for more than a year despite their distance –
she lives in Wichita US, he in Kampot Province – and whom she had never met
face to face. They were to be married in a matter of days.
The ceremony was planned for
Friday, and with only two weeks’ vacation from the meat processing plant where
she works for hourly wage of $ 11.50, it was important that all the wedding
plans go according to schedule.
But by the time she got through
with the US embassy in Phnom Penh on Tuesday afternoon, the bride-to-be was
close to despair: She had learned of the Cambodian government’s recent
suspension of marriages between Cambodians and foreigners and that it applied
equally to men and women.
“I am very upset,” the bride-to-be,
who asked to remain anonymous, said Tuesday afternoon inside the embassy’s
consular offices.
“We like each other, then we
fall in love and then we plan to marry. Now, here I am… After today, I don’t
have time until next year,” she said.
“I’m not a man. Why they put
that on a woman?” she asked. “He loves me and I love him… It’s not because he
wants to leave Cambodia.”
The Interior Ministry’s
ant-trafficking police chief, Bith Kimhong, confirmed Monday that the
suspension of marriages between Cambodians and foreigners applies to everyone,
regardless of gender.
“I want to add that the
Ministry’s order is also including men as well,” he said by telephone In a
March 29 directive from the Ministry of Interior, the government suspended
marriages between foreigners and Cambodians in a proclaimed effort to curb the
trafficking of poor, disadvantaged women to foreign countries through marriage
brokerage agencies that make large profit.
To “curb negative activities
and to improve the nation’s and girls’ reputations an value, the Interior
Ministry has issued the order… to temporarily suspend the issuing of permission
and marriage certificates form Cambodian citizens to get married to foreigners
until there is a new order,” the directive states.
The issue received international
attention following the recent release of an International Organization from
Migration report focusing on the vulnerability of Cambodian brides going to
South Korea in increasing numbers.
Interior Ministry spokesman
Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak said Monday that the government is working
collaboratively to strengthen procedures by which foreigners can marry
Cambodians, and that there is no work yet on when the suspension will be
lifted.
US Embassy spokesperson Jeff
Daigle declined to moment on the specific case mentioned, but said they had
received some reports of US citizens unable to obtain marriage permits from
their commune chiefs.
“We generally support
Cambodia’s efforts to combat human trafficking in all its forms, and we hope
the suspension will be of a limited duration,” he wrote by e-mail Monday.
Cambodia:
Not All Bliss for Take-Away Cambodian Brides
Womens United Nations Report
Network April 13, 2008
By Brian McCartan
As Cambodia's once war-shattered, now booming economy opens to the world,
Cambodian women are leaving in droves as several international marriage brokers
have established match-making services in the impoverished country. Operating
in a shadowy legal space, questions have been raised about the possible
exploitative nature of the business, which some contend has acted as a front
for global human trafficking rings.
Last week, the Cambodian government moved to put that trade on hold while it
investigates whether any of the international brokers have ties to underworld
crime syndicates. The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration
(IOM) had earlier drawn attention to the trade and is scheduled to release next
month an investigative report on the growing numbers of South Korean men who
come to Cambodia in search of brides.
The mechanics of the trade are still murky. What is known is that
women from mostly rural areas are brought by brokers into the capital city of
Phnom Penh and put on display for prospective foreign grooms. The brokers are
usually either informal operators or connected to one of several matchmaking
businesses, which until now operated freely in Cambodia.
Most of the women who contract with the matchmaking services are in their teens
or early 20s and usually from rural areas where they have received basic, if
any, schooling. The IOM's report says "the vast majority of
[Korean-Cambodian] marriages occur through an informal and exploitative
broker-arranged process".
The introductions are more transactional than romantic. Bride selection often
takes place in hotel restaurants where as many as 100 women, the IOM report
claims, are lined up and put on display for prospective grooms. After a woman
is chosen, details are worked out between the groom and bride-to-be and the
broker.
A marriage is held after a few days, followed in some cases with a short
honeymoon. The groom then returns to his home country while paperwork is
processed for his new wife to follow. In 2007, the number of foreign marriage
licenses rose to 1,759, up from a mere 72 in 2004. There were 160 foreign
marriages registered in Cambodia in January of this year.
South Koreans make up a large percentage of the men seeking brides in Cambodia.
In 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14% of all marriages in South
Korea, up from 4% in 2000. According to the United States 2007 Trafficking in
Persons Report, 72% of South Korean men in foreign marriages marry women from
Southeast Asia or Mongolia. They are often lured by billboards which dot the
South Korean countryside, advertising marriage services to foreigners.
Rural governments have even been known to subsidize marriage tours as a way of
dealing with growing rural depopulation. The South Korean marriage brokering
business began in the late 1990s, where it first aimed to pair Korean farmers
or physically handicapped men with ethnic Koreans from China. The Korean
Consumer Protection Board claims 2,000 to 3,000 marriage agencies now operate
in South Korea.
Marriage tours also began in Vietnam and by 2007 the number of South Korean
marriages to Vietnamese women ranked second only to brides from China. The
search for foreign brides has been driven by low birth rates and the growing
difficulty South Korean men have finding brides among the country's newly
ambitious young females.
Many of the men coming on marriage tours to Cambodia have already arranged
contacts through online services, which usually host images of eligible women
on their websites. One such service is "Mr. Cupid", which offers
Cambodian, Vietnamese, Vietnamese Muslim and Chinese women. The agency, which
has been operating since 1993 from Singapore and does not cater specifically to
South Koreans, claims to customers to "transform your life in six
days!"
Its operations were expanded beyond Vietnam to Cambodia and China in 2000 and
Mr. Cupid's website also offers franchise services. The website claims,
"Come to Cambodia today and we guarantee that your visit will be fruitful,
you will find the lady of your dreams waiting for you right there." From
services like this or those based in South Korea, men can arrange four- to
six-day marriage tours.
Match made in hell
In many ways such services are false advertising. Marriages between Cambodian
women and South Korean men are known to be fraught with difficulties,
frequently caused by huge cultural and linguistic divides. "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 IOM's report says.
Indeed, most of the women's fantasies of what their new lives will be like are
based on Korean movies and television shows that have recently gained
popularity in Cambodia and other parts of Asia. The new Cambodian brides often
expect their South Korean grooms to be rich, successful businessmen; the
reality, however, as the IOM report explains, is that they are often poor and
poorly educated. This impacts the women's hopes that through marriage they
would be able to send money home to support their families.
The pressures often result in disappointment and physical abuse. The deaths of
several Vietnamese wives in South Korea in 2007 and early 2008 due to
mistreatment by their South Korean husbands have already raised hard questions
about the trade in Vietnam. One case that made headlines in both Vietnam and
Cambodia involved the death of Tran Thanh Lan, a purchased bride who jumped or
fell from her 14th floor balcony after only six weeks of marriage in South Korea.
Her mother recently went to the country to demand an inquiry into her
daughter's death.
Because the business apparently lacks a coercive element - women are allowed to
turn down a marriage offer - it is not technically considered human
trafficking. The business side of the trade, however, is certainly
exploitative. Potential grooms pay as much as US$20,000 to brokers for their
services, while the bride's family is given $1,000 as well as money to cover
the costs of the wedding. The broker and agency divvy up the rest of the
spoils.
The IOM report indicates that while there have been cases of abuse and domestic
violence, "human trafficking has been far more difficult to
identify". This may be the case in Cambodia so far, but there is plenty of
documentation of Vietnamese women tricked by marriage brokers into factory work
in South Korea. On February 26, police in Busan, South Korea, arrested a
Vietnamese woman under suspicion of arranging sham marriages for $10,000 each.
Once the purchased brides receive Korean citizenship, the women were divorced
from their husbands and forced to work in factories.
Abuse against Cambodian brides has also been reported and some have ended up
running away from bad marriages. The 2007 US Trafficking in Persons Report said,
"NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are reporting cases of foreign
women placed in conditions of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor by
fake 'husbands' who work for trafficking rings or exploitative husbands who
feel they 'own' the woman and can use her as a farm hand or domestic
worker."
After recent crackdowns on the trade by Vietnamese authorities, the marriage
brokering industry has grown rapidly in Cambodia, leading some trafficking
experts to conclude that the brokers and trafficking rings have simply shifted
countries. Marriage brokering is now illegal in Vietnam, but at its peak 20,000
brides were leaving the country every year.
Current Vietnamese law allows only the establishment of marriage support
centers by non-profit women's groups. The Vietnamese Ministry of Justice has
recently recommended legalizing the service in order to place stricter controls
on it. The police, however, have recommended raising penalties, making the
offering of Vietnamese women as brides on a par with human trafficking.
The Cambodian government first publicly acknowledged a potential problem in
March. Sar Keng, deputy prime minister and minister of interior, said at the
launch of a national anti-trafficking awareness campaign that some cases of
human trafficking had been identified in the Cambodia marriage industry. Prime
Minister Hun Sen has since ordered a crackdown on the industry, including
cancellation of the licenses two South Korean companies engaged in the trade.
RELATED PRESS RELEASES
Press Release – Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Phnom Penh
– April 19, 2008
Recently, the Royal
Government of Cambodia has suspended the processing of all marriage documents
of its citizens who want to marry a foreigner. A senior official of Cambodia
was quoted in a newspaper, saying, ‘There are some cases of human trafficking,
found in the activities of the marriage industry in Cambodia.’ Another senior
official of Cambodia was also quoted, saying, ‘The temporary suspension aims to
put a stop to human trafficking under the pretext of marriages.’ The official
continued, ‘Seven women returned from South Korea because they could not bear
what had happened to them there.’
“The Royal Government
of Cambodia reacted immediately on international marriages, after there had
been a report by the International Organisation for Migration [IOM] related to
cases of emergency, as a result of the system of selecting partners for
international marriages, which is practiced in Cambodia and in Korea, and there
had as well reports in local and international newspapers on these issues, with
the key words of ‘human trafficking.’
“The UN definition of
‘human trafficking’ says: “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring
or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of
coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a
position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits
to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the
purpose of exploitation”.
“However, I have so
far never heard those words of threats, kidnapping, deception, and abuse by
using force, or taking a chance when the victims are weak, or by providing or
taking benefits to make the weaker agree with others whom to accept as manager
or boss, in an attempt of exploitation in marriages between Cambodians and
Koreans. They all married of their own free will, according the procedures of
both countries. If the Royal Government of Cambodia believes those brides were
sold to Korea, the businesspeople who run marriage companies – both Korean and
Cambodian – must be criminals, and they should be caught by the police without
delay. But if this is not true, it is completely regrettable that Cambodian
officials used the words of ‘human trafficking’ for international marriages
between Cambodians and Koreans.
“In fact, it is
reported that there are seven women who returned form South Korea, because they
could not bear what had happened to them there. If we compare the total number
of about 2,500 brides who married Korean men during the period of the last four
years, there are only seven women reported to have come back; this is an
extremely small number (of less than 0.3 percent). If compared to the increase
and the high rate of divorces in modern societies of other countries, it is a
shame that the IOM ignores the other 2,493 successful marriages, but it focuses
only on a small number of cases that should be treated with extreme care.
“It is also
unfortunate that a famous international newspaper had reported, based on the
IOM reports, that the grooms have paid up to US$20,000 to matchmakers; while
the brides’ families received US$1,000 at the most, and the rest went into the
pockets of the matchmakers.
“This is not so. The
IOM report said that the Korean men paid between US$5,000 to US$20,000 for the
total package tourist service of agents; the grooms paid the brides’ families
for traveling and for staying in Phnom Penh, as well as for the wedding gift,
from US$300 to US$1,000.
I would like to
express my own view by absolutely rejecting the words ‘human trafficking’ in
this context. Truly, there are some aspects of the system of international marriages
of selecting partners which need to be improved and corrected. Vast commissions
paid, and the limited time for future husbands and wives to understand each
other, are among those elements to be changed.
Moreover, different
governments and civil institutions must use their own ideas to help husbands
and wives from different ethnic cultures to settle in their target countries
well, and to bring with them happiness into their married life in the era of
globalization. Efforts to overcome the differences of cultures and to solve
misunderstandings in communication are to be of the highest priority.
UNIAP-Cambodia
Kristy Fleming
United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP)
UNDP Security Building 1
Phnom
Penh, Cambodia
Tel: 023 216 217
H/P: 092 269 205
Kristy Fleming - kristy.fleming@undp.org
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