Let’s Talk about Sexuality: Who does my body belong to?
A work made by a Vietnamese woman, depicting her hometown, which was entered in an immigrant women’s art contest. ©Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea    
I was born and raised in a village in the northern part of Vietnam. From a young age, I helped my family with farm work as I attended school. And then one day, international marriage became the main topic of interest in my neighborhood. Rumors about South Korea [hereafter, “Korea”] such as, ‘You can live better in Korea,’ ‘Korean men treat their wives well,’ ‘Even if you do farm work, you’ll be doing it with machinery so it won’t be as hard as it is in Vietnam,’ spread from person to person.
 
Among young people, who had only seen Korea in movies, the country became a must-visit destination because of the popularity of Korean Wave stars. In addition, my area had been difficult to live in ever since the war with the USA, Canada, etc., so there were a lot of people who succeeded by immigrating. Because some families became wealthy and lived well off of the foreign currencies that they sent back, people had a positive view of immigration. So people accepted the idea of international marriage with Korean men without hesitation. I, too, came to Korea in 2005 through marriage.
 
Marrying someone from another country and generation through a broker
 
If you ask us why we chose international marriage, most of Korea’s female marriage immigrants would say, “I wanted to live a better life.” Some say that we are quite brave to go and live in a country we know very little about, but now that I think about it, it can also be seen as somewhat reckless. It’s not easy to speak no Korean and know little about Korean culture, and then marry someone you’ve known for a very short time and start living under the same roof with him. We may be able to get married, but most of us can’t imagine how to be a wife, or how hard it is to adjust to Korea at first. That’s how I was, too.
 
The process of getting married isn’t easy either. Once the two people meet and decide to get married, they have report the marriage to both countries, and then the husband has to send invitation documents in order for the wife to be issued a visa and be able to come to Korea. Because the wife needs the husband’s official invitation to enter the country, there are sometimes cases in which a husband changes his mind after getting married, leaving his wife a married woman unable to come to Korea or get a divorce.
 
In addition, when you get married through a marriage brokerage agency, you don’t know much about each other and are unable to communicate well, so you can’t help but rely on the brokerage agency and what their interpreters tell you. So there have been a lot of problems with false information being given about either spouse. Because there aren’t regulations about that sort of thing, there were cases of women who were set up with men with mental health problems and so found themselves living in a goshiwon or wandering around without a permanent place to live.
 
There are also cases in which women marry not of their own will but following their parents’ or brothers’ orders, pushed into marrying and having children out of a sense of duty once they become adults. Even when two people from the same country or culture marry, it’s natural for them to have conflicts due to differences in their personality or ways of living, so it is even more difficult for two people from different generations and countries to live together.
 
People ask me, “Why don’t you have children? Have you been to a doctor?”
 
It was seven or eight years ago. After I’d been working at the Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea for a little while, I began to have chances to participate in off-site conferences and educational lectures. Then one day, at a solidarity conference, somebody started calling me “Mother”.[ In Korea, it is not unusual to call parents or even just middle-aged people “Mother” or “Father”, even if they are not the speaker’s own parents.]
 
At first, I didn’t realize that this female social worker was talking to me, and I didn’t respond. Then I figured it out. “Me?” I said, surprised. She clearly thought that female marriage immigrants were not just someone’s wife and daughter-in-law, but surely a mother as well. (Usually at these types of events, the participants call each other by their job titles or by seonsaengnim [“teacher”, a common respectful title].)
 
Partially because I didn’t speak Korean very well at that point, I couldn’t understand why she was calling me “Mother”. When I think about it now, it was probably because that social worker, and in fact most people, thought that a female marriage immigrant would definitely have children.
 
I know that the number of one-person households is rising in Korea, and that there are quite a few married couples who don’t have children. But it seems that people don’t see female marriage immigrants as being possible members of the latter group. They think that since we came to Korea through marriage, we should have children, and if we can’t or don’t have children for whatever reason, we receive suspicion for not being part of a “normal” family. Because I don’t have children, people have said to me, “Why don’t you have children? You should have a child. Have you gone to the doctor? What did they say?” These kinds of remarks are very stressful to hear.
 
If you try to answer relatively neutrally by saying, “It just hasn’t happened yet. We’re not in a hurry,” you get more “friendly advice”. There’s a store somewhere that sells herbal medicine that will help you conceive, take this or that medicine, and so on.  When people say those kinds of things, I’ve wondered, “Does not having children make me weird?”
 
It doesn’t stop there. When I don’t listen to their advice, they give me strange looks. It’s my choice what path I take and how quickly I walk it, so I don’t understand why people, especially people I’m meeting for the first time, are so interested in it.
 
As an immigrant, I’m thankful for people taking an interest in my life, but I really wish they wouldn’t take this kind of interest. But it is difficult to clearly express this feeling to them. When people I’m meeting for the first time bombard me with personal questions, I get flustered and don’t know what to do.
The Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea’s book The Stories No One Knew: Female Victims of Violence’s Struggles to Survive.    
 
Marriage immigrants without children are disadvantaged
 
And the suspicious looks aren’t the only problem. Women like me are disadvantaged when we apply for Korean citizenship. When women who do have children with their Korean husband apply for citizenship, they usually receive permission to naturalize and apply for their resident registration number within a year. But it took me two and a half. The immigration office suspected me and my husband of having a sham marriage because of our lack of children. That’s why, even though I started working in 2007, I wasn’t able to become a citizen and register for the national pension plan[While many foreigners are allowed to register for Korea’s national pension plan, Vietnamese people are one of several nationalities who can’t.] until 2012.
 
The reason that not having children is suspicious is that international marriage between Korean men and foreign women came about as a government measure. It was meant to address the problem of Korea’s aging population due to its low birth rate and to provide wives for men in farming villages who had missed their marriage window because they couldn’t find a partner in their area.
 
Because of this, policies related to female marriage immigrants are not measures to help them develop themselves and pioneer new lives in Korea. Instead, they are intended to support us to become good housewives and daughters-in-law who do housework and care work well so that we can adjust to Korean society and culture. These policies trap female marriage immigrants inside the system called family.
 
In this system and with these social pressures, childless international marriages like mine are suspected of being shams, or at the very least “abnormal” families. And if we divorce by mutual consent without having had children, women like me have to return to our country of origin.
 
Female immigrants’ bodies are treated as mere wombs or unpaid labor machines
 
In May, the Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea, where I work, published The Stories No One Knew: Female Victims of Violence’s Struggles to Survive. It introduces real cases related to seven different topics: control, economic exploitation, physical violence, childcare rights, independence, the right to stay in Korea, and sexual violence. It is full of stories of female marriage immigrants doing housework and engaging in economic activity but not getting recognition for their labors; instead they are seen only as marriage immigrants and suffer many types of violence and discrimination. 
 
There are also cases in which female marriage immigrants are seen not as people but as mere tools for labor. Some are deprived of their basic right to learn the language of the country in which they now live and are instead told, “I brought you here to help me in the fields. You should be doing farm work, not going out to learn Korean.” Others are deprived of the right to manage the money they earn at jobs.
 
If you ask people who a woman’s body belongs to, most of them will say something like this: “People’s bodies belong to themselves, and so women’s bodies belong to themselves whether they’re Korean or immigrant women.” They may even turn it around on you and ask why you’re asking a question whose answer is so obvious. But if you look at the cases brought to our counsellors, you’ll see that that’s often not true for immigrant women. Instead, some immigrant women’s bodies, and more specifically their wombs, belong to their husbands and their in-laws.   
 
There have also been incidents of so-called “modern-day ssibaji[Ssibaji were women hired by wealthy couples in the Joseon era to provide them a male heir by having the husband’s baby.]” that have caused a fuss in society. And cases in which women decided to get divorces because they could no longer bear that their husbands demanded unreasonable amounts of sex or showed them porn and asked them to imitate the acts being portrayed. Some women have been sexually assaulted by their fathers-in-law, other in-laws, or the marriage brokerage staff.
 
The problematic “I bought you” mindset
 
I think that all people, whether man or woman, immigrant or native, have the right to live with human dignity and that every single one of us is valuable. We must address the problems of female marriage immigrants being habitually discriminated against and looked down on because they immigrated for the purpose of getting married and of their being sexually objectified and seen as beings that is okay to mistreat.
 
Some Korean husbands and in-laws play a part in spreading this belief. Since most Korean men in international marriages become able to marry by paying expenses (though in some cases the woman also pays a marriage brokerage agency in her country), some families hold the mistaken belief that they’ve “bought” the immigrant woman.
 
The marriage expenses are things like the man’s flight ticket to the woman’s country, the wedding ceremony, the document processing fees, etc. This money goes to the broker, not the woman. Because of the belief that they have thus paid for the woman, this marital and family relationship starts from a place of mistrust and disrespect on the man’s side. It can lead to the men controlling the immigrant women, committing physical and verbal abuse, and even taking their lives.
 
Solidarity between a native and an immigrant. ©Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea    
Female marriage immigrants may have come here through international marriage, but we are all people with dignity. We have families in our home countries, and to those families we are beloved daughters and sisters. Immigrant women need to receive respect from our Korean families, as well as the consideration, support, and encouragement that will allow us to live well in Korean society. This isn’t just for our sakes, but for those of our husbands, children, and in-laws as well.
 
People, whether women or men, native or immigrant, own their own bodies
 
Immigrant women’s bodies belong to ourselves, not our husbands, in-laws, marriage brokerage, or anyone else. I wish that people would have more care about the way they express their interest in immigrant women, and not interrogate us about our bodies, marriages, pregnancies, and whether they have children. Of course, a lot of people who do this have kind intentions, but I wish they would reconsider their behavior from immigrant women’s point of view.
 
Today, when the protection of private information has become more important, people are more cautious about asking Korean men and women about marriage and children. I wish that people wouldn’t go up to an immigrant woman on the street and, just because they’re curious, ask her, “Korea’s nice, isn’t it?” and, “Your husband treats you well, doesn’t he?”, or question her about her husband’s age, whether the two of them have children, how many they have, and if they don’t, why not.
 
I also hope that people reading this won’t become upset and think, “Why? Then what do you expect me to ask them about? I guess I won’t ask them any questions. I won’t take an interest in them at all.” Sometimes people don’t have children after getting married, and sometimes they get divorced.
 
Asking a victim of domestic violence whether her husband treats her well, or asking a woman who has struggled with infertility why she doesn’t have children and offering to recommend a doctor to her – this kind of thing can be hurtful, not a sign of taking an interest. Even female marriage immigrants have the right to choose whether or not to have children and the right of sexual self-determination.
 
Immigrants are people with the same dignity as you
 
Just as many Koreans are going abroad, many immigrants are coming to Korea to work and live. We have to start from a place of respect and consideration for the other person instead of only looking at things from our own perspective. I want to meet people who don’t look at immigrants from Southeast Asia with pity and insincerely say, “You speak Korean well” after hearing us speak only a few words, but who greet us and say they’re glad we’re here.
 
Becoming a person who holds other people’s human rights in as high esteem as she does her own – I want to start with this small practice, and meet people person-to-person. I wish that people wouldn’t judge an immigrant woman on her background and appearance, no matter what country she’s from, what color her skin is, and whether her country is more or less prosperous than Korea.
 
Of course, just because one individual makes these efforts, it doesn’t mean that social prejudice, discrimination, and disrespect toward immigrant women, nor online ads for international marriage that commercialize sex, will disappear. What is needed is effort by many people, and solidarity between Korean and immigrant women. Also, the government’s support policies for female marriage immigrants need to move away from ‘raising the birth rate’ and ‘family care’ and focus on empowering us instead. The government should also crack down on the online ads for international marriage brokerages that commercialize immigrant women’s sexuality. And I want everyone to start learning about different countries and the importance of respect for diversity in grade school. 
 
And as an immigrant woman activist, I also hope that more immigrant women will become human rights activists, find their voices, and let people know about immigrant women’s realities.  Female marriage immigrants aren’t beings made to take care of their husbands, children, and in-laws as housewives, or baby-making machines. I want us to speak the truth that we are people too and have dignity. I want to let people know that even immigrant women who no longer have families in Korea do have dreams and are leading independent lives. I hope that this society will become one in which immigrant women can comfortably speak up, and even now I’m working hard in the field of immigrant women’s human rights.
[Translated by Marilyn Hook]
 
*Original article: http://ildaro.com/8273 Published Aug. 3, 2018
 
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