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 languages. 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 another 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 South Korea, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt for the meeting. She wore a little makeup.
Among the questions he asked was whether she was a virgin—a question that 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 given 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 impressions 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 that 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’s dollar.
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. Choy Hoy, 49, thinks his daughter left South Korea after an unsettling argument with her sister-in-law.
“I also feel unhappy to see her return. I expected her to have a 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 of 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, like 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 of 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 for remittances. Many cases 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 marriage 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 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 than 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 years she weighed her options 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 plans 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’s hard to live together,” she said.
Her face, flushed at the beginning of the interview, had returned to its pale complexion.
