Entries Tagged 'Society/Government' ↓

The total number of foreign spouses in Korea is more than 116,000, or 160,000 if those who have acquired Korean citizenship are included. And I know more than 40 of them personally. The number of Filipino men and women who are married to Koreans is 5,306. It’s a little less than I expected but then that figure doesn’t include those who are now Korean citizens. What surprised me is the increasing number of Cambodian spouses.

Foreign spouses surpass 110,000

By county, Chinese formed the biggest group of foreign spouses with 66,115 or 57 percent, followed by Cambodia with 25,640 and Vietnam with 23,301. Filipinos and Japanese numbered 5,306 and 5,711, respectively.

The Chinese as the biggest group of foreign spouses is not surprising at all. This number includes those who are of Korean descent. My sister-in-law’s brother is married to one, a Chinese national with purely Korean heritage.

Some 86 percent of them have lived in Korea less than four years and more than 30 percent of them lived in Gyeonggi Province including Incheon. Seoul has about 25 percent of the foreign spouses, South Gyeongsang Province including Busan has 12 percent, while 10 percent of them live in Jeolla Province including Gwangju.

I didn’t expect to know that more than half of the foreign spouses live in urban areas like Seoul, Incheon, Gwangju and Busan, considering that 96 percent are Asian. There’s a preconceived notion that if you’re an Asian here, you must have come from a poor background and that you’re married to a Korean farmer living in a rural area.

When I first created this blog, I thought of writing more about life in Korea as a foreign wife, daughter-in-law and a mother. However, I’d been too busy the past few weeks but I’m not going to abandon the original idea.

Last year, I joined a Korean language class sponsored by the Korean government at the Women Migrants’ Center in Sungin-dong, Jongro-gu. I was introduced to the center by a Filipina friend I met online. She has been studying the language at the center for almost a year that time. The place is just sooooo near my residence but I didn’t know about it until then. I guess the government needs to step up their information campaign.

I could already converse in basic Korean that time. I could also read Korean well but I was assigned to the elementary (초) class since I didn’t ace the evaluation test that they gave. It was a little harder than I expected.

The class is totally free. The textbook and its accompanying workbook are also free, and so are the snacks. In my class are two other Filipinas, six Vietnamese, six Chinese, two Bolivians and a Japanese. The elementary class ran for six months. It was a once-a-week two hour class every Thursday afternoon. If you have a child, the people at the center would even take care of your son or daughter so you could concentrate on the class. I liked my class a lot, but the Vietnamese are just soooo noisy! They would talk to themselves in their language even while were having a class. So the teacher almost always complain. LOL

The intermediate classes started on the third week of January, while I was on vacation in the Philippines. This time, they increased the frequency of the class to three. The class meets on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning at 10:30 AM. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the classes because of my son who sleeps for 14 hours a night. He almost always wake up beyond ten in the morning!

I hope to join the next class this fall. I’ll be attending the intermediate classes and hopefully I’ll be able to learn enough Korean for me to be able to guide my husband’s family when they go to the Philippines. Everyone in the family wants to travel to my country but my father-in-law insists that we’re not going there until I can be their tour guide. Oh well!

Anyway, the Women Migrants’ Center doesn’t only offer Korean language class to foreign women married to Korean men. They also have Vietnamese classes for the Korean husbands of Vietnamese women. Isn’t that nice? They also have classes for cooking Korean dishes. (I can cook Korean dishes really well, according to my mother-in-law, so I didn’t think I needed it.) And of course, counseling and help to those who need it.

Last year, we had special activities like an introduction to “hanji” or Korean paper. We had several parties and excursions, all paid for by the Korean government! Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend the Christmas party where I was tasked to sing the first stanza of Wonder Girls’ Tell Me. I had the flu and I didn’t want to infect the people at the party.

Here are some pictures of my class. Not everybody was around at that time. It was just our practice session for the Christmas party last year. I’m the one in the beige jacket.

[Show as slideshow]

On a rainy spring Sunday, we (I, my husband and our son) went to Jongmyo Shrine in Jongro. We went to the museum inside where one can find the vessels used for the Royal Ancestral ceremony. There’s an old caretaker who speaks English well enough for him to converse to English-speaking tourists. While my husband was inside and I was taking care of my son, the old man (ajosshi) approached and started asking questions. A “mixed” family, even in Seoul, is a spectacle to some people. There’s a preconception that Korean men marries Southeast Asian women because they couldn’t get a Korean wife. Either they are farmers or are first sons living with the parents.

I first answered the guy in Korean. Then he asked me if I could speak English. I said yes, so he started asking in English. The usual questions… where are you from? “Philippines”… where do you live? “changsin-dong”… how long have you been here? ” almost 5 years”… do you live with your parents? “no. they live in the province”… what does your husband do? “he works for a trading company”… how do you communicate? “in english”… you must have a hard time learning korean? “i do. i have never attended paid classes and we don’t speak korean at home”… you must have a hard time learning korean culture? “hmm, not really. my husband is a good teacher.”

After a while, my husband came out and the ajosshi talked to him and asked him the same questions in Korean. We said our goodbyes and left. Outside my husband was smirking. He said the ajosshi was a bit disappointed. I asked why, and he said the guy was expecting us to be the stereotypical Korean-SE Asian couple.