VietNamNet Bridge - A marriage broker says that all sorts of Korean men come to Vietnam in search of brides, but most are industrial workers or farmers. And the brokers are good at their chosen professions.

So that prospective Vietnamese brides are not disappointed, marriage brokers always tell them that in Korea, the life of workers and farmers is many times better than in Vietnam, because their work is mechanized.

In a black suit and shiny shoes, a tall Korean man is introduced to Vietnamese girls by Madam Cuong. The marriage broker says that this man is a farmer but his monthly income is not low, around $2000 per month, and he owns a house in Pusan.

The man with the ruddy, lumpy face explains that his standards for choosing a wife are quite simple: he didn’t require a beautiful and tall girl, just a good-natured girl. His wife will have to help in the fields for around ten days a year. She will stay at home to take care of the family the rest of time.

When the man interviewed several Vietnamese girls, the interpreter was surprised when a candidate asked why the man had chosen to find his wife in Vietnam rather than Korea. The Korean man answered truthfully that near Pusan, the biggest port city in his country, it is extremely difficult for a farmer who is not rich and not handsome to find a good wife.

The 47-year-old man added that he had read on the Internet that Vietnamese girls are good-natured, gentle and obedient, so he had come to Vietnam to seek his wife.

Unlike workers and farmers, who often decide to marry a girl after a speedy selection, a man who was introduced as a teacher with a monthly income of $5000 and his own house was the prize at a selection in Thuy Nguyen district, Haiphong.

Wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt, handsome and smiling, this man entered the room with a strong smell of cologne. This tall man astonished the Vietnamese girls.  They whispered to each other that they rarely saw such a handsome groom in selections.

The 38-year-old ‘teacher’ asked the candidates to walk around the room and turn about while he took a good look at them. He chose some of them for photos and filming, but said he wasn’t satisfied with any candidate. The interpreter said that this man was looking for a 23-24 year old woman about 1.5 meters tall with white skin.

Some girls suspected that this man was choosing a bride for someone else. “Why does he have to take photos and film us in a live meeting?” one girl asked.

The Korean grooms are typically thirty-five to fifty years of age and some of them are disabled, for instance the future husband of a girl named Hoai, of Kien An district, Haiphong.

Hoai, 20, said that the man who chose her is very ugly, twice her age, fat and has a twisted neck. Even so, she’s happy to become co-owner of a chili pepper farm in the near future. While fulfilling marriage formalities in South Korea, this man has phoned Hoai every day and always thanks his future wife’s family for trusting him.

“He told me that it is difficult for Korean men who are workers or farmers to get married, let alone disabled men like him. So they have to go abroad to seek wives,” Hoai said.

Marriage brokerage is a good business

Madam Nha has a rather untidy look, but this 50-year-old woman is among the most powerful marriage brokers in Haiphong City. Among dozens of brokers in Vietnam’s premier seaport, Nha is the most experienced; she’s been in the business for over 10 years.  Unlike the other brokers, who try to dress smartly, Madam Nha always wears a black outfit and plastic sandals and calls the girls “daughter” to make them comfortable.

Nha previously managed a small tea shop but, seeing that more and more Vietnamese young women getting married to foreigners, she closed her tea-shop to become a marriage broker. “This business is flourishing,” Nha said. “When girls don’t want to marry foreign men and foreign men don’t come to Vietnam to seek wives, then I will re-open my tea-shop.”

Madam Nha recounted that in her early days as a marriage broker, she had to go to poor communes in Thai Binh, Ha Nam, Hung Yen or Ha Tay to recruit rural girls to attend ‘selections.’

“I had to tell them about a good life in the future in a foreign country. Some families thought I aimed to trick their daughters so they drove me away,” Nha recalled.

She said several years ago, girls in the Haiphong area competed to marry Korean and Taiwanese men so there was no need to treat them politely. Now there are more brokers while the “supply of goods” (i.e., girls) is reduced so she has to treat the girls sweetly.

Madam Nha boasted that she has become so famous that girls come to ask for her help. She said her candidates are all beautiful, and they “sell well.”

According to many girls, this broker knows when to be firm and when to yield, so she is respected by both candidates and Korean partners. Meanwhile, other brokers said that this woman has earned several billion dong (hundreds of thousands of US dollars) from her marriage brokerage service. She is now the most “powerful” broker in Haiphong.

In contrast, Madam Lan is one of the youngest brokers in Haiphong. Besides her persuasive skills, this 30ish woman is good at make-up art. She says she can turn unpolished rural girls into real gems.

Lan says marriage brokerage is a sideline to her principal job as a florist.  “When I don’t have clients, I go to the market to sell flowers. That’s a way to find girls,” she adds.

She confided that she is even seeking a foreign husband for her mother, a nearly 60 year-old widow.

Then there’s Madam Muoi, who is not very experienced but is very successful. She boasts that she has helped hundreds of girls to find Korean husbands.  Her secret, she says, is that she takes care of her “brides.” She invites the young women, recruited from Quang Ninh, Hung Yen, Ha Nam or Ha Tay, to her home to teach them how to make up, how to select a husband and how to persuade their families to let them marry a foreign man.

This woman is ready to help girls to do the paperwork they need to go abroad. If they find husbands with good jobs who live in cities, brides will have to pay Muoi a fee of about 20 million dong (a bit more than $1000). Those who end up marrying workers or farmers need only pay 6 million dong.

Muoi said she has to hire ‘organizers’ and her income is very low compared to these people, who are paid thousands of US dollars by Korean grooms after successful negotiations. However, she admitted that this job has changed her life. She has been able to buy a house and motorbikes thanks to her work as a marriage broker.

The chairman of a commune in Thuy Nguyen district, Haiphong, commented that the income of marriage brokers is very high. Some have earn nearly ten billion dong (over $500,000) in several years.  “And they find every trick to hide this income from the tax authorities,” he added.

PV