Filipino wives have opportunity to visit home

By Park Jin-hai

Multicultural households with Philippine migrant wives were given a rare chance to visit their families back home, Thursday.

The “Homeland Visit Event,” jointly organized by the Korean Red Cross and the Korea Airports Corporation, gave round-trip tickets to 30 households with a total of 111 family members, allowing them a trip home they couldn’t afford because of economic woes they faced in Korea. The multicultural family members will stay in the Philippines from 10 to 15 days and each family also received 500,000 won in cash to use during their stay.

“Due to the economic conditions, I couldn’t go to my country and stand beside my father’s death bed. I am so grateful now that I can go and visit my ailing mother for the first time in about 16 years,” said Margarito Gado, a 46-year-old housewife living in Busan who is a beneficiary of the program.

The organizers have hosted the event every year since 2010 as a corporate social responsibility program.

Under the program, multicultural migrant women and their families that couldn’t visit their home lands for least two years due to economy difficulties are given round-trip tickets and spending allowances.

Those selected to go to the Philippines are the first batch on this year’s program, and three more events and 160 additional multicultural families will be given trips to other destinations within the year.

There are more than 220,000 multicultural households in Korea, as of Jan. 1, 2002, 13,426 of whom came from the Philippines. They mainly reside near Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.