A suitable wife
This is a project for Advanced Reporting class for my MA (circa 2011). I wrote this with Malte Kollenberg, Korea correspondent for Kollenbecker Multimedia Journalism.
DEATH by strangulation, says a January 19, 2011 Philippine autopsy report. Suicide, says another issued in South Korea eight days earlier.
They are reports on the same body, Filipina Cathy Bonesa Mae Deocades', 25. Like many other women, she fled to escape poverty by marrying a foreigner. Soon after the wedding, Cathy moved to Korea, perhaps expecting a life she thought she knew from soap operas.
She returned to the Philippines in a box.
A poignant send-off
The People’s Reform Initiative for Social Movement (PRISM)- an NGO affiliated with the Commission on Filipinos Overseas – conducts pre-departure orientation seminars for Filipino women married to foreigners.
The seminar for Korea-bound brides takes two days and includes talks on immigration laws, culture, and domestic abuse. PRISM talks to about 60 Korea-bound women in a given month. These women need certificates from attending this seminar to live in their husbands’ country.
Counselor Len Espinosa says PRISM has been including Cathy’s case in the talks. Years ago, Cathy was just one of those women attending the seminar. Now she is a warning. A marriage broker introduced Cathy to her husband. Most of the women attending the seminar also met their husbands the same way -- even though none of them would admit they did.
Brokering the deal
In 1990, the Philippines passed Republic Act 6955, which criminalizes profiting out of matching Filipina brides to foreign partners or advertising announcements for such searches.
This did not stop the extremely lucrative business. The Internet made the process easier as some brokers pose as harmless Internet dating sites.
In Korea, the mail-order bride system is legal and in fact a thriving industry. A man searching for a bride for example seeks out a broker from the Philippines. The broker is typically female and middle-aged.
Regina Galias of the CFO says these brokers hold “show ups”, or a gathering of potential brides in hotels, restaurants, even the back of vans - where, a representative of the man picks out the most attractive girl in the group.
Once a bride has been chosen, the groom shells out the equivalent of P500,000 for the processing of papers, the actual wedding ceremony and the preparation of the bride to eventually join her husband in Korea, says Angela Penson, Excutive Director of PRISM.
Whatever is left, the broker keeps.
Motivations
Economic upliftment is a potent force that drives Filipinas to marry foreign men they hardly know. There is the hope that doing so would secure the future of their families.
Trends have been alarming. In 2005, the average Filipina marrying a South Korean was between 25 and 29 years old, from the National Capital Region, a college graduate, and had a job.
In 2009, the average age went down to 24 to 26 years old, and there was a marked increase in the number of high school graduates and unemployed women.
The Korean government reports that in 2004, eleven percent of Korean marriages took place between Korean men and foreign women. It is a 38-percent increase from 2003 levels. In 2004, more than 25 thousand men married foreigners, a number more than twice the 2002 figure.
By the end of 2010 7,476 Filipinos, married to Korean nationals were living in South Korea, most of them women. For example: Out of 919 Filipino Seoullites, only 50 are men.
Korea has an increasing demand for women. Educated women leave for the cities of Seoul or Busan leaving behind workers and farmers in more rural areas.
The 2010 census reveals that there are 881,665 unmarried men older than 32 with nothing more than a high school diploma. But only 472,370 women with a similar background.
Korean women want an educated, financially stable partner with property. Men from rural areas do not meet these qualifications, so they look abroad for others who would take them as they are.
Not a bed of roses
Filipinas find that their Korean husbands are bound by filial piety. Newlyweds do not live on their own. The wife serves the parents of her husband. They have no independent funds and the money is managed by the in-laws.
Domestic abuse is a reality. A PRISM document says Cathy had suffered in the hands of her husband and her mother-in-law. Under worst-case scenarios, some girls find themselves not as wives but sex or labor slaves.
Korea’s Ministry for Gender Equality and Family has set up an Emergency Support Center for Migrant Women. This is the place women can turn to. There are six such centers in Korea with a total of 77 staff members.
For Penson, this is not enough. “Korea should do more”, she says.
The Sheila story
Not all marriages are unhappy. Sheila Choi, 32, is a Methodist pastor who will be living in Korea only after spending seven years in the Philippines with her husband.
He is her age, also a pastor, and has been very “kind, caring, loving and flexible” all these years. She met him when she was working as an English language instructor to Koreans: he was a friend of her boss.
Jazmine’s “whole new world”
Jazmine, 20, looks frustrated. The CFO has been holding her certificate. She married her 47-year-old husband in April; he is now waiting for her in Korea.
Jazmine says she is excited to begin a new life there. But the counselors have been asking her difficult questions. She is being grilled for marrying in San Juan City when she lived in Dasmarinas Cavite. “It was my aunt who processed my documents,” Jazmine insists.
"How exactly did she become your aunt?" Penson asks. Jazmine just looks at her blankly.
Penson has a knowing, sad look on her face. The law does not have enough teeth, entrapment operations are slow in coming, and the women are desperate enough to embrace the unknown – even with the tragic tale of Cathy looming in the background.
