HCMC police raid illegal bride parade for South Koreans

Police in HCM City on July 7 busted an illegal marriage brokerage that was parading 51 women in front of five potential South Korean husbands at a private house in Binh Tan District. 

The women at Binh Tan District police office in Ho Chi Minh City Tuesday after they were found parading in front of five South Korean men.

LookAtVietnam - Police in HCM City on July 7 busted an illegal marriage brokerage that was parading 51 women in front of five potential South Korean husbands at a private house in Binh Tan District. 

The women, aged 18 to 33 years, were taken to a nearby police station in Binh Tan District, with the five men, Korean broker Kil Young Hee, interpreter Vo Thi Truc Ha, and four Vietnamese brokers, including Vu Thi Bach Yen, owner of the house where the parade took place. Authorities have ordered the 51 women to return to their hometowns.

According to police, the Koreans contacted Vietnamese broker Nguyen Quang Mau in Tan Phu District earlier this month, asking for a meeting to select some Vietnamese wives.

Mau and his Vietnamese partners, Yen, Duong Quoc Thai and Tran Thanh Phong, then allegedly selected the women from middlemen in Binh Tan and Tan Phu districts, who had brought young prospective brides from poor farming families in the Mekong Delta.

Police said Phong, Yen and Thai all had previous convictions for illegal marriage brokering.

The brokers sell each woman for US$10,000 with only $500 of that going to their families while the rest gets divided up between the brokers, with Yen taking the largest share, the newswire VnExpress said Tuesday.

Brokering marriages for fees is illegal in Vietnam, where matchmaking can only be conducted by non-profit centers run by provincial women’s associations and charities.

The government in January announced a plan for the nation’s first matchmaking firm in HCMC to prevent the abuse of Vietnamese women by foreigners.

HCMC police in April caught a South Korean man and his sister trying to choose a Vietnamese wife from 23 women.

In March the police raided a similar parade but only after three Korean men had fled with three women they chose from 69.

Another case was busted in early February when 31 Vietnamese women were paraded before two Korean men.

Several studies have revealed that the number of Vietnamese women marrying foreigners, mostly from East Asian countries, has surged in the past decade.

Many of those marriages, arranged through unauthorized matchmakers, result from the women’s desire to have a better life and help their destitute families in rural areas.

VNN/TN/VNA