..on Getting Married in Korea to a Korean!

Source:NYT

I have got a couple of emails on the subject. Honestly speaking, I have no clue but since friends or acquaintances have gotten married so I know enough to scratch the surface of the subject. However, talking on it further I would highly recommend a book by Laurel Kendall "Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, & Modernity (1996)",
go through it and you will surely understand what it is all about? 

One Pakistani asked me how can he find a Muslim Korean woman...and the answer is: God knows better since a few that I have met are very strictly following Islamic principles and that means dating is out of question. Hello... !!!

By the way, in the past ten years besides drastic changes here and there, one of the most interesting ones is a marriage between a Korean man and a foreign woman. Every one out of ten marriages is taking place between a Korea and a foreign spouse. With respect to foreign wives,  by country, China formed the largest group of foreign wives including ethnic Korean Chinese. Vietnam came next followed by the Philippines. Japan is fourth in place and Taiwan fifth. Many a times experts say that real life in Korea is far different from the Korean dramas and the K-pop videos that women have fallen in love with hence, the tragedy strikes at time like in this case.

Another important thing is that a union of a Korean woman with a foreign man is still a big taboo. Men usually migrant workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan etc. have gotten married to Korean women. The government on the other hand deals with such couples differently too. Though things have improved in terms of laws and policies but still a foreign man marrying a Korean woman has to face troubles. A Korean newspaper highlighted why Korean women wants to marry a foreign man here: which boils down to the fact that the burden of fulfilling traditional roles is leading these women to seek intercultural relationships. According to the statistics, China and Japan accounted for the biggest proportion of men married to Korean women. Next came the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Germany.


By the way, NYT has a very good article on "Who counts as a Korean" -  this will give you a good picture of what things are like here....for anyone who is interested,read through it. All the best folks!

:-)