Cook, clean, and be pretty

James Pearson

By James Pearson, Raphael Rashid

With the rush and stress of Chuseok neatly out the way, many a Korean housewife will once again be bracing themselves for the so-called “myeongjeol (public holiday) stress” associated with the routine cooking and prepping required for the lunar new year holiday in February. Traditionally an unspoken role of Korean women in households all across the country, it’s becoming a ritual no longer practiced solely by the locals.

Natasha (not her real name) is 29-year-old,

Raphael Rashid

blue-eyed, freckled skin, and miles away from her hometown of Kotlas, a small town in Northern Russia. Having arrived in Korea five years ago, she is relaxed and confident in her new role as, a housewife ― a Korean housewife that is.

In between looking after her young son and thirty-something Korean husband, she cooks, does the housework, and runs a tight ship ― and preparation for Chuseok bears no exception. With the help of her mother-in-law, the seemingly mystical art of manufacturing “samsaeknamul’’ and “galbijjim’’ seems effortless, despite being still relatively new to the game. Apart from improving her Korean skills, by studiously preparing for notoriously difficult advanced level of the Korean proficiency exam, she is your everyday Korean housewife ― by definition.

“Because of strong support from my new family, I’ve been lucky enough to not experience too many difficulties in adapting to Korean society,” Natasha tells us. And it seems she is not alone. A 25-year-old Uzbek lady, Gulsanam, married to a Korean man who appeared on an SBS special of TV Show “Good Morning’’ last week, was an instant success with Korean netizens thanks to her beauty, personality, but most of all her seemingly effortless ability to adapt to the fairly stringent traditional demands and expectations placed on Korean housewives: cook, clean, and be pretty.

“Uzbekistan and South Korea no visa policy now!” said one netizen. “I’m an old bachelor... should I go to Uzbekistan?” said another. “If you must marry, marry an Uzbek woman.”

Another added, “So we can conclude from this… that everything is forgiven if she is pretty… Treat her well and don’t get tired of her until the end!” And a more rabid netizen exclaimed: “Don’t let the joseonjok in. Let those Uzbek virgins in instead,” referring to the Chinese of Korean descent, clearly not to the taste of some.

Korean newspaper NocutNews, perhaps in an effort to redeem themselves from the series of articles stigmatizing foreigners as sexual predators (Times Forum, July 20), also ran a story about a Russian bride, pictured clad in hanbok, describing her first Chuseok experience. Presumably dominantly male netizens again commented favorably: “This husband met the right woman. We need more wives from Russia and Ukraine, not East Asia, for more handsome children,” “It’s completely different to buying marriage. This is real international marriage,” and the ever-logical “I try to accept multicultural families, but really I don’t want people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, or the Philippines to marry Koreans.”

But what’s wrong with a joseonjok wife? Or a Bangladeshi bride? The above comments seem to be a far cry from the online xenophobia and nationalism that erupted after the election of Jasmine Lee, a Korean citizen of Filipino descent, to the National Assembly last spring. Instead, she was labeled a “mail-order beggar” ― which, appropriately, begs the question: who are the real beggars? The women who leave everything they have behind in search for a better life, or the single men who are seeking, or rather, buying love? Probably neither.

According to data from the 2010 Korean Census, for every 100 Korean women in prime marriageable age, there are now 119 men, with the figure set to rise next year to 123. And with a lack of newborns, and love, it need not be surprising that a “market’’ for wives has emerged. A simple search on the Korean Internet reveals many agencies, some legal, others perhaps not so much, that offer promises of “exotic’’ brides and honeymoon success stories. And we’ve all received those suspicious looking spam emails from some dark corner of the more-than-shady Internet.

But while many in Korea might be quick to complain about the influx of “foreign’’ wives (or maybe just the ones that don’t fit the local beauty standard), it only takes another quick search to find hundreds of Korean brides waiting to marry “out,’’ looking for a better, or maybe just different, life elsewhere. Even in the U.K., one of the most multicultural counties in the world, the mail-order bride business is rampant, with hundreds of sham marriages reported every year of women seeking a British passport ― but there are plenty of kosher ones too.

Yet, even when immigrant brides might abuse the system or, worse, the system and their new husbands abuse them instead, images of young Russian or Vietnamese women wearing hanbok at Chuseok, or winning political seats, look set to continue ― and are perhaps in less need of an entire television program to document or exoticize the process. Perhaps the real measure of change will come when, rather than being judged on their looks or ability to make kimchi, foreign brides will universally be welcomed as the people they are, along with the cultures that they bring.

James Pearson and Raphael Rashid are editors of koreaBANG (www.koreabang.com), a daily-updated blog that translates trending topics on the Korean internet into English. They can also be followed on twitter @koreaBANG or on facebook.com/koreaBANG.