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From South Korea: Adapt, Adjust,
Accept Filipino women who go to South Korea to marry suffer from a culture shock, but decide to stay on and endure rural life as farmers' wives...
Married to Korean farmer Kim Kang-Ho in 1996, the Filipino woman has become the pride of her village for her diligence and courtesy, and how she has adjusted to life in this country. But in the middle of her song, Jacqueline broke into tears and hurried backstage. ''You wouldn't guess how hard it has been for me,'' she said. South Korea's winters were bitingly cold for her -- and she found the food odd. But nobody understood Jacqueline as she was having a hard time adjusting to life and marriage in a foreign culture. Life was made even tougher by the Asian economic crisis, which in end-1999 forced her family to sell off its cows at a loss. Though they worked harder, they ended up more indebted. But what brings Jacqueline down the most is how her husband, who was a young, promising and cheerful farmer with big dreams when she first met him in 1994 in Manila, has turned into a depressed man. Asked if she regrets coming to South Korea and life so far, she replied: ''No. Why should I regret? This is the life I chose. I have my family, my daughter and the neighbours that I care for. I still have dreams for something better that I am sure would come.'' But Jacqueline's stated contentment is shared by few Korean women, many of whom shun lives as farmers' wives. According to a survey by the Agriculture Life Research agency, 69.4
percent of Korean women living in agricultural towns say they want
to move to the big cities, and only 2.4 percent said they want to
stay in their villages. None of them want to marry farmers. A marriage arrangement centre in Seosan has about 200 bachelors in their late 30s and early 40s still on that list after three years because they are unable to find brides, said Yoon In-Soo, who runs the centre. ''Among them are smart, promising and committed young men with their own farms, but the problem is none of the Korean women want to become a farmer's wife.'' This shortage of brides is why women like Jacqueline, who often meet husbands through brokers and religious organisations, end up in South Korea's villages. Apart from her, 27 other Filipino women are married to farmers in Seosan, most of whom got married in the past two years. The Seoul government estimates that about 1,200 Filipino women, holding hopes of better lives abroad, came and married Korean farmers in 2000 alone. This trend does create problems, which some religious leaders are trying to address. ''It's very difficult for Asian brides to get adjusted to the new married life in South Korea, because they married before they get to know their bridegroom,'' said Kim Kwang-Don of the Catholic Labour Counselling Office in the southern city of Pusan. ''Most of them married only after meeting the Korean man two or three times through group meetings'' arranged by religious and other groups,'' he added. The search for foreign brides began in the early nineties with the government and some farmers' NGOs that volunteered to be matchmakers between Korean women living in northern Chinese towns and Korean farmers. But many of the brides ran away from these arranged marriages due to different mindsets, some of them staying on illegally in South Korea to work. In contrast to such cases -- where the women are perceived to be keen on marriage as a way of staying in South Korea -- Filipino women are seen to be more committed to their life as farmers' housewives, social experts say. For instance, Emilinda Chow, one of 33 Filipino wives in Koksung village, 300 km south-west of Seoul, is often busy at a market with another Filipino wife, Lia, buying beansprouts to cook soup for her husband and one-year-old son Sung-Bin. Emilinda was an electrical engineering student at home, then taught at a kindergarten in Hong Kong before marrying Korean farmer Cho Chun-Hyung in May 1999. Before that, she had met him only twice and exchanged pictures and letters. Today, friends and neighbours see her as a diligent person and homemaker, but few know how hard it was for her at the start. When she first arrived in Koksung, she found the food too spicy. The hardest part of it was she had to learn to cook Korean dishes from her mother-in-law, whose instructions in Korean she could not understand. Worse, Emilinda could not even talk to her husband about how she felt, because of the language barrier. ''Speaking and listening (Korean) was so hard that I cried a lot.'' What keeps her going is her son Sung-Bin and the friendship of the other 32 Filipino wives in Koksung. They regularly gather together and have fun cooking, chatting and eating with people who speak the same Filipino language, eating with their fingers as they do at home instead of using chopsticks like they do in their Korean homes. ''Being together and chatting helps us in releasing a lot of stress
that comes from the communication barrier here,'' one Filipino woman
remarked.
Republished with permission from Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS) Asia-Pacific. About Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS): IPS, the world's leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. Its clients include more than 3,000 media organizations and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics, and other users. IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.
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