Archive for the ‘Korea’ Category
NY Times: Korean Men Use Brokers to Find Brides in Vietnam
NY Times provides us with more interesting content.
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 facing the same problem.
The article actually painted a fairly positive picture, portraying an industry that is trying to help people, with many successful marriages, as opposed to one that takes advantage of people.
I find it fascinating that a traditional homogeneous culture like Korea has taken to cross-ethnic marriages. NY Times sites that the rate of marriage to foreignors in Korea has risen from 4% to 14% in just 5 years since 2000.
Shock and distaste is a natural reaction, although it is worth mentioning that the company portrayed seem to make a real effort to match-and-meet people compared to the days of the mail-order brides from Russia. Also, I find people who criticize these programs to be entirely self-righteous. As long as people make the decision themselves, people seem to choose appropriately in a rational sort of way. The book, Freakonomics cites some interesting data that seems to show that women who choose polygamy do so after a rational (and usually accurate) determination of their available choices.
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