From Viet Nam News:According to statistics by the General Statistics Office, between 2005 and 2008, 32,000 Vietnamese women married foreigners, mostly Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean.
Meanwhile, statistics by the South Korean's Statistics Office show that, the number of Korean men marrying Vietnamese women increased from 134 in 2001 to 5,822 in 2005.
According to Ho Xuan Huy from the Viet Nam International Organisation for Migration (IOM), most foreign marriages are arranged through marriage brokers.
"These agencies earn their fees by enticing Vietnamese women with false information about their future husbands," Huy said.
Many women are then forced to become servants for their husbands' families and made to work hard and sometimes even hit, according to a report by the IOM.
Lack of knowledge among Vietnamese women living in rural areas and a lack of adequate regulations on foreign marriages are problems that need to be addressed to tackle the issue, according to Quy.
Le Thi Hoang Thanh, from the Institute of Legal Science of the Ministry of Justice, said that Viet Nam did not have any systems in place to provide information to citizens who wish to marry foreigners. There are also no regulations for the protection of Vietnamese women who choose to settle in their foreign husbands' country, as no agreements have been reached for Vietnamese women's rights abroad.
Article by Alan Mozes in Yahoo News:It's a photo that many credit with helping to end the Vietnam War: A 9-year-old girl, naked and in obvious pain, runs through a street after suffering napalm burns over much of her body.
What the iconic photo -- snapped in 1972 by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut -- doesn't show is the girl's struggle to survive and thrive in the aftermath of that day.
Now 46 years old, Kim Phuc Phan Thai (Kim Phuc to most) spoke recently at a conference of burn survivors and burn care specialists in New York City on the physical and psychological struggle that she went through over the ensuing decades.
Phuc has come far and is now a public speaker, peace activist, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, child welfare advocate, married mother of two, and inspiration to burn injury survivors worldwide. She lives in Toronto, her home since seeking political asylum in Canada in the early 1990s.
Interesting article from the blog: Equal Writes - as the author takes us on a virtual journey through this museum.
The museum is under construction, so there were only three rooms open - one permanent exhibit, and two very limited temporary exhibits, one on women in war propaganda, and one telling the stories of female street vendors.
A rather unusual article came my way - concerning the increase in the number of young Vietnamese women who are marrying in order to escape poverty. Well why not, you ask - this isn't something strictly Vietnamese - women worldwide have been doing it for centuries.But an industry has been built up around this - offering young women what seems to be an escape from poverty - but that, unfortunately, is not always the case.From Philly.com:"Nearly 70 young Vietnamese women swept past in groups of five, twirling and posing like fashion models, all competing for the hand of a Taiwanese man who had paid a matchmaking service about $6,000 for the privilege of marrying one of them.From the delta in Vietnam's south to small rural towns in the north, a growing number of young Vietnamese women are marrying foreigners, mostly from Taiwan and South Korea. They seek material comfort and, most important, a way to save their parents from destitution in old age, which many Vietnamese consider their greatest duty.Women in Tan Loc and other delta towns began marrying foreigners in the 1990s, when Vietnam opened up economically and many Taiwanese and South Korean firms set up operations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's southern business hub.Poverty and the close proximity of foreign businessmen seem to be major reasons for the trend. The biggest complaints come from women's groups, who consider it demeaning, and from young village men for whom the pool of potential brides is shrinking.Besides the marriage broker's fee, the groom gives about $300 to his bride's family, Lang said. After that, if all goes well, her husband may send up to several thousand dollars a year to her family , depending on what he can afford.More than 100,000 Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese men over the last 10 years and the numbers are rising, said Gow Wei Chiou of the Taiwan representative office in Hanoi. In the same period, roughly 28,000 Korean men married Vietnamese, according to the Vietnam Women's Union."
