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It was midnight here in Hanoi, or already 2 a.m. back in Seoul, South Korea. But after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan-su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar here, where 23 young Vietnamese women seeking Korean husbands sat waiting in two dimly lighted rooms.
"Do I have to look at them and decide now?" Kim asked, as the marriage brokers gave a brief description of each of the women sitting around a U-shaped sofa.
Thus, Kim, a 39-year-old auto parts worker from a suburb of Seoul, began the mildly chaotic, two-hour process of choosing a spouse. In a day or two, if his five-day marriage tour went according to plan, he would be wed and enjoying his honeymoon at the famed Perfume Pagoda in the Huong Tich Mountain southwest of here.
More and more South Korean men are finding wives outside of South Korea, where a surplus of bachelors, a lack of marriageable Korean partners and the rising social status of women have combined to shrink the domestic market for the marriage-minded male.
Bachelors in China, India and other Asian nations, where the traditional preference for sons has created a disproportionate number of men now fighting over a smaller pool of women, are also facing the same problem.
Marriage market goes global
The rising status of women in the United States sent American men who were searching for more traditional wives to Russia in the 1990s. But the United States' more balanced population has not led to the shortage of potential brides and the thriving international marriage industry found in South Korea.
Now, that industry is seizing on an increasingly globalized marriage market and sending comparatively affluent Korean bachelors searching for brides in the poorer corners of China and Southeast and Central Asia. The marriage tours are fueling an explosive growth in marriages to foreigners in South Korea.
In 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14 percent of all marriages in South Korea, up from 4 percent in 2000.
After an initial setback — his first three choices found various reasons to decline his offer — Kim narrowed his field to a 22-year-old college student and an 18-year-old high school graduate.
"What's your personality like?" Kim asked the college student.
"I'm an extrovert," she said.
The 18-year-old asked why he wanted to marry a Vietnamese woman.
"I have two colleagues who married Vietnamese women," he said, adding, "The women seem devoted and family-oriented."
One Korean broker said the 22-year-old, who seemed bright and assertive, would adapt well to South Korea. Another suggested flipping a coin.
"Well, since I'm quiet, I'll choose the extrovert," Kim said finally, adding quickly, "Is it OK if I hold her hand now?"
In South Korea, billboards advertising marriages to foreigners dot the countryside, and fliers are scattered on the subway. Many rural governments subsidize the marriage tours, which typically cost $10,000.
The business began in the late 1990s by matching South Korean farmers or the physically disabled mostly to ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Korea Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors, and the foreign brides came from a host of countries. The board says 2,000 to 3,000 agencies operate now.
The widespread availability of gender-screening technology since the 1980s has resulted in an overabundance of South Korean males. What is more, South Korea's growing wealth has increased women's educational and employment opportunities, even as it has led to rising divorce rates and plummeting birthrates.
'Higher standards' back home
"Nowadays, Korean women have higher standards," said Lee Eun-tae, the owner of Interwedding, an agency that last year matched 400 Korean bachelors with brides from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. "If a man has only a high school degree, or lives with his mother, or works only at a small- or medium-size company, or is short or older, or lives in the countryside, he'll find it very difficult to marry in Korea."
Critics say the business demeans and takes advantage of poor women. But brokers say they are merely matching the needs of Korean men and foreign women seeking better lives.
"But this business will get more difficult as those countries get richer," said Won Hyun-jae, the owner of i-Bombit, another agency. "Now, even a disabled Korean man can find a Vietnamese bride. But eventually Vietnamese women will ask why they have to go marry a Korean man when life in Vietnam is good."
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