Monday, July 12, 2010

Korea: Groom School

From the Chosun Ilbo:
Of the 309,759 couples who tied the knot in Korea last year, 33,300 or around 10 percent were of different ethnic origin. Some 110,000 women from China, Mongolia and Southeast Asian countries live in Korea, many of them married to Koreans they barely knew before marriage and headed for an acrimonious divorce.

In order to deal with these problems, the Justice Ministry on Sunday announced plans requiring Korean men who want to marry a foreign woman to attend classes on "marriage ethics." The classes will start this August at immigration offices before men head out to China or Southeast Asia in search of a foreign bride. Each class will last three to four hours and will focus on teaching men that it is wrong to think that they are buying a wife and to hide things about themselves like previous marriages or problems with alcohol. The government will not grant visas to foreign brides of men who failed to take those classes.

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