Foreign Spouses

: Commercially Brokered Blind Dates…promise beds of roses

By Alicia T. Pingol, Professor, Northwestern University, Philippines

   From 1990-2005 some 160,000 male Koreans have taken foreign spouses. 107,000 (67%) are Chinese, 17,000 (10%) are Japanese and 6,000 (3.9%) are Filipino. Their unions answer a mutual need: care crisis in Korea and for upward mobility by women in the donor countries. Among the couples matched by commercial brokers, more often than not, the marriage contract comes first and love comes later. The more promising relationships are among those who met as students, or were introduced by friends as the usual courtship ensues.

   With Filipina spouses, let me focus on those that were commercially brokered. My two month fieldwork yielded some initial findings.

   The women embody the sacrificial economy, that is, the marriage was a sacrificial contract. Believing that they saw something in the men who will become their husbands, the “not-so-as-it seemed” must be accommodated. From the very start the seeds of endurance were implanted for there was a suspicion as they never know how the marriage will work. There is reluctance by some to encourage others to be foreign brides. On the other hand, there are a number who convinced cousins and friends to follow suit. 

   The women I saw in these marriages were so determined to make it work. Most of them are in the first five years: learning the language, training for employment (their most recent was the English Teacher Training provided by the government), and definitely starting a family by having a baby. Additionally if the husband is the first and only son, there is also a mother-in-law to serve.

   By their resilience and stamina, somehow love flourishes, (or maybe there is love at first sight), and many of them succeed.  Others are not so lucky. They are contemplating divorce, while some have finally gotten it. The most common cause is battering. Tara and Sonia (not their real names) belong to this group. They say that the financial difficulties seem to initiate verbal and physical assault. I see them as mirroring larger social institutions, products of the contradictions of late capitalism. The women are persons and currencies, the commercial brokering emphasized the latter, and they are also workers. They therefore bear the signs of capitalism. Women and men become stressed. There is a structural crisis, they embody this crisis. The men provide for their families, they often build up high adrenalin at the workplace. They are frustrated when such investment does not give equivalent returns. They may look for scapegoats – the women. Women pick up the message that they are nurturers, they keep the walls secure so they are the first to get the lash from every storm. They dream for economic emancipation from their own countries, they enter into arrangements that demand the same struggle. Whether separated or not yet, the women are grappling with what they are becoming, they are strangers not just to their husbands, but also to themselves. For most of the cases, it is their bodies that need strong defense. The securing of these bodies is possible only in so far as they can confront the demons in themselves: what is it that they want from their own bodies? Also in their bodies there is something that is familiar and not familiar since their coming to the sacrificial/wage economy has constructed a stranger in themselves.

   This glimpse into the lives of foreign spouses raises the following questions:

Is there not a surplus of loving bodies in donor countries? Is there not a surplus of competing bodies in recipient countries? Are there not living Buddhas advocating neither victory nor defeat? Couldn’t transnational marriages be a space for mutual exchange of benefits?

* Alicia T. Pingon did her fieldwork in Gwangju from Oct. to November 2006 under the sponsorship of the Asia Culture Academy. - Ed.