Health, criminal records mandatory for intl marriages

International marriage seekers must present key personal information such as health and criminal records under new guidelines to enter into force on Thursday.

The new guidelines also make it mandatory for international marriage brokers to provide translation services to facilitate communication between Koreans and their foreign spouses-to-be, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said Wednesday.

"In order to have a healthy international marriage culture take root, the ministry will provide education for broker agencies on the purpose and content" of the new rules, said Lee Bok-sil, a family policy director at the ministry.

The guidelines will be implemented as part of the newly revised ordinance on marriage arrangement business. Under the tightened rules, those seeking a foreign spouse will be asked to present certificates on their marital status, health, employment and criminal records when they sign up with a marriage agency. Those documents have to be translated by the broker in the language of the prospective foreign spouse. Interpretation service also has to be provided in face-to-face meetings.

The legal revision was the latest move by the Korean government to protect foreign spouses following the murder of a Vietnamese woman by her mentally ill Korean husband in July. The ministry has stepped up monitoring of matchmaking agencies and is expanding counseling services for foreign wives.

As gender imbalance has become more and more pronounced here with women moving to cities, many men from farming villages search for a wife through matchmaking agencies.

One out of every 10 marriages last year, or 33,300 out of 309,759 (10.8 percent), were international marriages, most of them between Korean men and women from China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Divorces of international couples made up 9.4 percent of the total here last year.