They met for the first time at a hotel coffee shop. He’d flown five hours from South Korea. She’d come eight hours by bus from the Vietnamese countryside. The attraction was modest but enough. About 18 hours later, they were married.
With the exchange of rings, provided by a broker, Danh Thi Cam Loan and Lee Kwan-ju became sudden partners in a matchmaking gamble — one in which strangers sharing neither language nor culture embark on a life together.
Such mail-order marriages have boomed in South Korea over the past 15 years, driven by a glut of low-earning men who struggle to find partners in their achievement-obsessed country. But a problem has developed: Too many of the marriages are falling apart almost as quickly as they start.
Mounting concern about the mail-order marriages is now prompting South Korea to more forcefully regulate the process. In perhaps the boldest step, its government is funding several bride schools in Vietnam — day-long or three-day courses in which women are introduced to the Korean language and customs before getting their visas.
For Danh and Lee, their marriage last October was just the beginning of an odyssey that typifies both the hopes of the women coming to Korea and the realities that await them. Over the next six months, Danh, 20, would learn the basics of Korean, wait for a visa, board an airplane for the first time and finally join Lee in Wonju, a city of 300,000 some 90 minutes east of Seoul.
Lee, 36, who manages a computer cafe, paid several thousand dollars to a broker for the opportunity to travel to Ho Chi Minh City and marry for the first time. He knew he was taking a chance. When he first met his wife, there was almost nothing that they could say to one another — at least nothing that felt important.
Bride school: Where South Korea’s mail-order wives learn their trade