Vietnamese Spouses In South Korea, Victims Of Spousal Abuse

It is a national shame that foreign wives living with Koreans have suffered spousal abuse. This issue surfaced again on Tuesday when Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet asked the South Korean government to help Vietnamese married to Korean men lead better lives here. Triet made the request when he accepted the credentials of Im Hong-jae, the newly appointed Korean Ambassador to Hanoi.

Pham The Duyet, president of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, also made a similar request. He told Im that South Korea should pay more attention to the Vietnamese immigrants so that they can better integrate into Korean society. There is no doubt that the Vietnamese leadership is concerned about the alleged abuse of Vietnamese women by their Korean husbands. The Southeast Asian country has been hit by media reports that Vietnamese wives are the victims of various kinds of spousal abuse.

A horrible case in Daejeon in July involved a 19-year-old Vietnamese woman who reportedly died after being violently beaten by her husband. In another case, a Vietnamese woman entered into a marriage with a Korean man who only wanted her to give birth to a baby. The man divorced her and took the baby to reunite with his infertile ex-wife. Some people fear that such incidents could harm diplomatic relations between Seoul and Hanoi.

The abuse of foreign wives is not confined to women from Vietnam. Many foreign women getting married to Koreans in search of the ``Korean dream'' confront the stark reality of domestic violence, verbal abuse and discrimination in Korean society. Some of them even fall prey to human trafficking. An annual U.S. report on human trafficking showed that a growing number of foreigners are trafficked to South Korea for sexual or labor exploitation though brokered marriages. The report carried a photograph of a roadside billboard advertising an international marriage broker who promises to offer Vietnamese brides who would not run away. This indicates how serious the human trafficking issue is in the country.

Cases related to Vietnamese women have drawn much attention because their numbers are rapidly growing. The number of Chinese women married to Koreans last year was estimated at 14,450. But most of them are ethnic Koreans from China's northeastern provinces. The number of Vietnamese wives stood at 9,812. Thus, Vietnamese women have actually emerged as the largest foreign wives' group in South Korea. The number of women from the Philippines and Mongolia reached 1,131 and 559, respectively.

The Seoul government has worked out policy packages to protect the rights of foreign spouses and help them adapt to Korean society. However, such steps have yet to produce any remarkable results. A Seoul National University survey showed that one out of every 10 foreign spouses has suffered domestic violence, while three out of every 10 has experienced verbal abuse.

Policymakers should take more fundamental measures to ensure foreign wives' human rights and crack down on domestic violence and other types of spousal abuse. South Koreans will also have to warmly embrace not only foreign brides but also migrant workers as our society increasingly moves toward globalization and multiculturalism.

Latin America On The March To Stop Violence Against Women

Rallies, demonstrations in the streets, conferences, cultural events - yesterday's International Women's Day commemorations around the world took many different forms. In Latin America, women's-rights activists and their supporters called special attention to various forms of violence against women that continue to prevail in many countries in the region.

Among the alarming statistics: "In Guatemala [last year], 603 women died as a result of violence [against them], a figure that represents ten percent of all murders in the country.. ..In Chile, according to official data, seven out of every ten women has been.. ..beaten or psychologically maltreated."

A just-released report by the Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington-based, independent organization that promotes human rights and democracy, focuses on conditions many women face in Mexico and Guatemala. In those countries, the WOLA study points outs, "The absence of a functioning criminal justice system has contributed profoundly to a continuum of violent acts against women. The failure to act is perpetuating a culture of impunity, and consequently sending the message that it is acceptable to hit, rape and murder women."

A WOLA representative said in conjunction with the release of the new report: "The police and justice institutions in Mexico and Guatemala are weak, ineffective and often corrupt. These flaws are compounded by gender biases within the institutions, which act to systematically silence and discriminate against women."

In Mexico, the national congress has created a new law aimed at guaranteeing women "a life free of violence." The problem is, its critics say, that it doesn't put forth "specific sanctions against aggressive behavior" toward women. In the congress's lower house, legislators on the left have called for swift justice and tough punishment for those who sexually abuse, torture or lock up women, as well as "pederasts and their accomplices in positions of power." Those legislators have described the murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juárez - almost 500 since 1993 - as "an open wound that will never heal." They're sick and tired of lawbreakers getting away with impunity.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, in a public appearance that mixed International Women's Day celebrations with politics, called for a change in the nation's penal code to make life sentences mandatory for those who abuse or enslave women (example: in forced-prostitution rings).

In Chile, Michelle Bachelet, the country's first female president - and a former victim of torture under the U.S.-backed, right-wing dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet - told International Women's Day celebrants that "[e]quality is not a dream" and that "women have arrived to stay in Chilean politics." Nevertheless, she acknowledged, "We're still not a society of men and women who are equal in rights and opportunities."

In an official statement issued to mark yesterday's big day for the women of the world, the United Nations' new secretary-general, South Korea's Ban Ki-moon, observed: "In almost all countries, women continue to be underrepresented in decision-making positions. Women's work continues to be undervalued, underpaid or not paid at all. Out of more than 100 million children who are not in school, the majority are girls. Out of more than 800 million adults who cannot read, the majority are women. Worst of all, violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women's lives, on their families and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence - yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned."

Some 25 Percent Of Women Over Age 65 Victimized By Domestic Abuse

Domestic violence against an intimate partner is not confined to younger women. A recent study found more than 25 percent of women older than 65 had been a victim of abuse by a spouse or other intimate partner.

Researchers from Ohio State University said that abuse included physical, sexual or psychological violence.

In a survey of 370 women in two western states, researchers found about 18 percent had experienced sexual abuse or physical abuse, and 22 percent had been victimized by nonphysical abuse, which included being threatened, being called names, or having their behavior controlled.

Abuse lasted anywhere from three to 10 years. In addition, when the women were asked to rate the severity of the abuse they suffered about 60 percent of the victims of physical violence and 71 percent of the victims of psychological abuse rated the abuse as severe.

About 3.5 percent of the women surveyed had suffered violence in the past five years, and 2.2 percent in the past year.

"Intimate partner violence is not a problem only for younger women," Amy Bonomi, lead author of the study and associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University, wrote in a statement.

Results of the study is published in the February 2007 issue of The Gerontologist