It was midnight here in Hanoi, or already 2 a.m. back in Seoul. But after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan Su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar, where 23 young Vietnamese women seeking Korean husbands sat waiting in two dimly lit rooms.
"Do I have to look at them and decide now?" Kim asked, as the marriage brokers gave a brief description of each of the women sitting around a U-shaped sofa.
Thus, Kim, a 39-year-old auto parts worker from a suburb of Seoul, began the mildly chaotic, two-hour process of choosing a spouse. In a day or two, if his five-day marriage tour went according to plan, he would be wed and enjoying his honeymoon at the famed Perfume Pagoda in the Huong Tich Mountain southwest of here.
More and more South Korean men are finding wives outside Korea, where a surplus of bachelors, a shortage of marriageable Korean women and their rising social status have combined to shrink the domestic market for the marriage-minded male. Bachelors in China, India and other Asian nations, where the traditional preference for sons has created a disproportionate number of men now fighting over a smaller pool of women, are also facing the same problem.
But a booming Korean marriage tourism industry is seizing on an increasingly globalized marriage market and sending comparatively affluent Korean bachelors to searching for brides in the poorer corners of China and Southeast and Central Asia. The marriage tours are fueling an the explosive growth in marriages to foreigners in Korea, a country whose ethnic homogeneity lies at the core of its self-identity.
n 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14 percent of all marriages in South Korea, up from 4 percent in 2000.
After an initial setback — his first three choices found various reasons to decline his offer — Kim narrowed his field to a 22-year-old economics major in college and an 18-year-old high school graduate.
"What's your personality like?" Kim asked the college student.
"I'm an extrovert," she said.
The 18-year-old asked why he wanted to marry a Vietnamese woman.
"I have two colleagues who married Vietnamese women," he said, adding, "The women seem devoted and family-oriented."
One Korean broker said the 22-year-old, who seemed bright and assertive, would adapt well to South Korea. Another suggested flipping a coin.
"Well, since I'm quiet, I'll choose the extrovert," Kim said finally, adding quickly, "Is it O.K. if I hold her hand now?"
She came over to sit next to him, though neither dared to hold hands. She spelled out in her name in her left palm: "Vien." Her name was To Thi Vien.
In South Korea, billboards advertising marriages to foreigners dot the countryside, and flyers are scattered on the Seoul subway. Many rural governments, faced with depopulation, subsidize the marriage tours, which typically cost $10,000.
The business began in the late 1990s by matching Korean farmers or the physically disabled to mostly ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Korea Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors and the foreign brides came from a host of countries. The board says between 2,000 and to 3,000 agencies operate now.
The widespread availability of gender-screening technology since the 1980s has resulted in an overabundance of Korean males. What is more, Korea's growing wealth has increased women's educational and employment opportunities, even as it has led to rising divorce rates and plummeting birth rates.
"Nowadays, Korean women have higher standards," said Lee Eun Tae, the owner of Interwedding, an agency that last year matched 400 Korean bachelors with brides from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. "If a man has only a high school degree, or lives with his mother, or works only at a small- or medium-sized company, or is short or older, or lives in the countryside — he'll find it very difficult to marry in Korea."
Critics say the business demeans and takes advantage of poor women. But brokers say they are merely matching the needs of Korean men and foreign women seeking better lives.
"But this business will get more difficult as those countries get richer," said Won Hyun Jae, the owner of i-Bombit, another agency. "Now, even a disabled Korean man can find a Vietnamese bride. But eventually Vietnamese women will ask why they have to go marry a Korean man when life in Vietnam is good."
For now, Vietnam remains a popular source of brides, second only to China. Marriages with Vietnamese women are considered so successful that at least one rural government, Yeongcheon, in Korea's southeast, subsidizes marriage tours only to Vietnam.
At Incheon International Airport outside Seoul, an increasingly familiar scene unfolds in front of the arrival gates in the mornings. Korean men, holding telltale bouquets and often accompanied by relatives, can be seen greeting their Vietnamese brides as they arrive on overnight flights from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.
It was also at Incheon Airport that a tense-looking Kim and another client began their marriage tours. Three brokers for Interwedding and i-Bombit arrived.
Kim, urged on by an older sister, decided to go to Vietnam after a last-ditch effort to meet a Korean woman in December failed. A high school graduate, he lives with his mother and an older sister, and works on the assembly line of a small manufacturer of car keys. Though he lives in one of the world's most wired societies, Kim does not use the Internet.
The other client was Kim Tae Goo, 51, who farms ginseng and apples on the hectare, or 2.5 acres, of land he owns in Yeongju, a town in Korea's southeast. Kim had recently divorced a Chinese woman he married after the death of his first wife, a Korean woman. He lives with his 16-year-old daughter and his elderly mother; his 21-year-old has left home.
Ahn Jae Won, a Korean broker who has long been based in Hanoi and is himself married to a Vietnamese woman, began: "The women have come out looking their best for you. But don't expect them to look as pretty as Korean women. There is a big gap in our GDP's. Don't be condescending. Don't lie. If you lie, they'll find out eventually and feel betrayed and run away."
"The parents know that their daughters will marry a Korean man. The authorities know this is happening, but there'll be trouble if we do it in front of them. So I seek your understanding. Once we land in Hanoi, even though it'll be very late, we'll go meet the women right away. It's safer to do this at night."
"One last thing. Other companies allow you to sleep with the women on the first night. We don't. Only on the bridal night. We must, after all, keep our decorum as Korean men. Is that O.K. with you?"
The two nodded.
And so, at the Lucky Star karaoke bar here, the older Kim addressed the Vietnamese women, most in their early 20s.
"My 16-year-old daughter lives with me and I'm a farmer," the older Kim said, after informing the women through the brokers that he would also send $100 a month to their parents in Vietnam. "Is that O.K. with you?"
"I know how to farm," said Bui Thi Thuy, 22, one of the two women Kim eventually focused on.
Asked whether she had any questions, Thuy said she had none. But the other woman, an earnest 28-year-old in a light-green jacket, asked: "If I marry you, will you love me and take care of me forever?"
"Of course," Kim answered, then quickly settled on Thuy.
After a few hours' sleep, the new couples and the brokers squeezed into a small van for the four-hour ride to the women's home province, Quang Ninh, about four hours east of Hanoi. There, the couples would be interviewed by the local authorities before registering for their marriage.
The road out of Hanoi, a wide highway flanked by new factories owned by multinationals like Canon, eventually narrowed to two lanes criss-crossed frequently by cows. Farther out, farmers could be seen working the soil by hand, and signs of Vietnam's booming economy grew fewer.
Most of the Vietnamese women marrying Korean men came from the rural areas around Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Both Vien and Thuy had friends who had married Korean men and lived, happily it seemed, in Korea. Like many Vietnamese, they were also avid fans of South Korean television shows and movies, the Korean Wave of pop culture that has swept all of Asia since the late 1990s.
The Korean Wave has transformed South Korea's image in the region, presenting the country as having successfully balanced tradition and modernity, a place that produces coveted Samsung cellphones and cherishes family ties. The week the two women met their new husbands, Vietnamese television was showing in prime time a Korean television series called "Successful Story of A Bright Girl" — the story of a simple country girl who goes to Seoul and captures the heart of a tycoon.
"To be honest, I don't know much about Korea except what I've seen on television," Vien said. "But the Korean landscape is beautiful. Korean men look sophisticated and affectionate. They seem responsible and they live in harmony with their family members and their colleagues."
A soccer fan, able to rattle off the jersey numbers of David Beckham or Zinédine Zidane, she had registered two years earlier with a local broker for marriages with Koreans. With only Vien and an older brother, her parents — her father was a construction worker for a local firm — had sent both to college.
By contrast, Thuy was one of five children of rice farmers. She had registered with the agency soon after graduating from high school.
"A friend of mine married a Korean man and now lives in Seoul," Thuy said. "We talk on the phone sometimes. She's very happy. She says there are so many people and tall buildings in Seoul."
At age 22, she said, half of her peers had already married. As she waited to get married, she helped with household chores, forbidden by her parents to engage in the farm work that might blemish her looks.
The couples registered for their marriages and underwent medical check- ups, running into other Vietnamese- Korean couples along the way. The younger Kim wrote a letter in Korean to his bride — trying to allay the anxieties he saw on her face, promising to protect her in Korea and surmount the inevitable problems — but found no way to relay its meaning. The couples bought Korean and Vietnamese dictionaries, pointing to words or using broken English.
On Tuesday, about 40 hours after landing here, the Korean men married their Vietnamese brides in a double ceremony. The brides' relatives waited at a large restaurant here with expectant looks.
"Today is the union not only of two people, but of two countries," said Vien's father, To Minh Seu, 55. "Vietnam and Korea share many similarities. We are both Confucian societies."
Standing next to her daughter and her new son-in-law, Thuy's mother, Nguyen Thi Nguyet, 56, said, "This is a poor country, but conditions are much better in Korea. I hope my daughter will have a better life there."
But the father, Bui Van Vui, 52, was displeased that his daughter was marrying a man just one year younger than he was. The night before, he had telephoned Ahn to complain about the age gap.
"I'm still very worried because of the age gap," the father said as his son-in- law listened to Ahn's interpretation. "I'm slightly relieved now that I see my son-in-law for the first time. But I can't stop worrying."
"Don't worry, don't worry about a thing," Kim said.
Still, the father looked grim throughout the ceremony.
"Let's tell him about the compensation," Kim told Ahn, referring to the $100 he would send every month.
"Later, later," Ahn said.
As he left the restaurant after the ceremony, the father turned around at the entrance to take a final look at his daughter. He pressed two fingers against his lips in a kiss goodbye.
Later, Thuy said: "I was my father's favorite. He really adores me and is worried."
She, too, was worried. "I know Korea only from television, but it must be very, very different from reality. I don't know whether my new family will like me and I don't know how I'll adapt. I'm overwhelmed with worries."
It came time for the Korean men to return home on Thursday night, with their wives staying behind to complete the paperwork to join them.
At the airport here, Thuy announced she had something to tell her husband and asked Ahn to interpret.
"Please extend my greetings to your mother and children," she said. Kim reached out for a handshake, but the brokers pressed him to give his wife a hug.
"Don't worry about me. I'll study Korean very hard and by the time you see me I'll be good at it. We had only a short time together. But I felt affection between us and started to feel love for you. When you're in Korea, please call me."
"I'll call you in two days," he said.
The two women would leave Hanoi in three months, the same way half a dozen other Vietnamese brides, visas in hand, did on a recent night. The extended families of these brides had come from the countryside to bid them farewell, some still wearing car sickness patches behind their ears for the long drive here.
Many, it seemed, were visiting the airport for the first time. Some kept riding an escalator up and down, their faces showing the thrill of a new experience. Then, with boarding-time beckoning, they clustered in front of a window looking into the immigration office, noses pressed against the glass, and waved at the brides as they were stamped out of Vietnam and went off to catch the red-eye to Korea.
