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Two undercover women reporters posing as prospective brides were asked last month for Rs 500,000 as a facilitation fee to be paired off with Korean men who would take them to Korea. Some women have paid up to Rs 1 million to brokers to be 'married' so they can go to Korea to work. But once they get there they are sold to older men to work like slaves.
Dawa Sherpa, 22, from Nuwakot paid to be 'married' to a 32-year-old Korean man so she could go to Korea. When she got there, he sold her to a mentally handicapped elderly farmer. After she nearly ran away, she was 'given' to another Korean man.
Twenty-one year old Shanti Magar from Baglung paid Rs 1 million to a marriage broker in Kathmandu to be married to a 35-year-old Korean man two years ago, but when they got to Korea he sold her to a 56-year-old man who made her work in the fields.
Dawa and Shanti are among many young Nepali women who are so desperate to migrate to work in Korea that they are willing to get married to Korean men, little knowing that they will be sold to older, handicapped farmers who are willing to pay to buy young women to do household and farm work and provide sex.
This modern form of slavery has been seen with other 'Asian brides' in the 1980s in Japan and Korea with women from the Philippines and Vietnam, but as rules were tightened the trafficking has moved to Nepal.
The girls are trafficked in three principle ways. The most common is for a young Korean male to come to Nepal, marry a girl take her back to Korea and sell her to someone else for $4,000. The second way is for an elderly Koreans to come to Kathmandu themselves, buy a girl from a Nepali broker, marry her and take her back. The third method is for Nepali women to pay a recruiter up to Rs 1.2 million to get a Korean work permit, go to Korea where she is blackmailed and sold.
Nepali newspapers are full of advertisements from marriage bureaus inviting Nepali women to get married to Koreans. Although the ads all say the women don't have to pay any fee, they end up paying between Rs 500,000 to
Rs 1 million. The brokers then also get paid by the Korean intermediary.
The ads also make exaggerated promises: that the women can get Korean citizenship within two years after which they can earn lots of money and take their family members to Korea. The girls are then sold, resold, and sold again when they get to Korea.The 'bride grooms' arrive on the bi-weekly Korean airlines flight in Kathmandu, get married in a church or a temple, get a 'no objection letter' from the Korean embassy and go back with a marriage certificate. They then go back to Korea and within a few months send back necessary documents for the girls to get their visas.
"A Nepali woman, who has spent up to Rs 1.2 million to get married to a Korean, is re-married to a handicapped old man when she gets here. There are many cases like this," says Manju Thapa, a Nepali student in Korea. "There are even cases of Nepali husbands who have paid brokers to get their wives married to Korean men."
Ganga paid a broker to work in a restaurant in Korea, but the man she was handed over to started beating her up when she refused to be sold in marriage to a Korean man. Her visa has now expired and she is being blackmailed. "She and another Nepali women fled the village of Chung Sung Namdo to Seoul, but there are 22 other women like them," a Nepali in Korea, Bambahadur Lawati, told Himal.
The government in Kathmandu is either ignorant or doesn't care about the plight of Nepali women. A young woman from Khotang who was cheated by her 'marriage' broker filed a case with the police in Maharganj, but the investigation has never been pursued.
There are now over 300 Nepali 'brides' in Korea, but the Nepali embassy in Seoul says that since the Nepali women become Korean citizens after marriage, it is a problem that the Korean government should resolve.
A Korean social worker who was in Kathmandu recently, Cecilia Lee, said: "If something is not done, there will be widespread exploitation of Nepali women, they will suffer like their sisters from Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia have suffered."
Sunil Neupane in Himal Khabarpatrika,29 Jan -11 Feb 2009
