By Kim Rahn
Foreign wives who have stayed in Korea for years want to have jobs, but support programs for such spouses only focus on settlement, said a group of immigrant women.
Four wives who help other foreigners at Yeongdeungpo Global Village Center said Korean society also sometimes treats naturalized Koreans as foreigners and other times as Koreans, using double standards.
The four, who came here after marrying Korean men, talked about their experiences from funny episodes arising from the language barrier to sorrowful ones they had due to cultural differences. They are: Jing Chunyue from China, 37, who has been here for 10 years; Wang Yahui from China, 39, who has stayed here for five years; Yeni Kustiana from Indonesia, 32, who came here 11 months ago; and Nguyen Thi Be Ngoan from Vietnam, 25, who has been in Korea for over five years.
The women have all experienced difficulty while adapting to a new language and new culture, but they seemed to regard it as inevitable. They said they had to talk with their husbands and in-laws through body language.
“My mother-in-law told me to bring a ‘bit’ (comb), and I misunderstood and brought her a ‘bitjaru’ (broom). Also, I’m still not good at using positive and negative sentences. When someone asked me whether it is fine to live with my mother-in-law, I meant to say, ‘yes, it is,’ but I said, ‘no, it isn’t,’ in the presence of my mother-in-law,” Kustiana said, laughing.
Jing, who is an ethnic Korean-Chinese, and knew Korean, said she still had language problems as Korea uses too many loan words.
They also had hard and sad times due to cultural differences, especially in childbirth and childcare.
“In Vietnam, we put cotton in the baby’s ears and wrap the baby’s head with a towel. When I did so, my husband was like, ‘Are you crazy?’ When distressed, immigrant wives don’t know to whom they can appeal for comfort,” Nguyen Thi said.
Wang said she was surprised at the food she had at the hospital right after giving birth: kimchi. “Chinese eat egg and unsalted food after delivery, but they gave me spicy kimchi. I missed my mom so much and cried.”
The women said government policies for immigrant wives focus on newcomers, adding what they want and what those who have stayed for a long time want are different.
“Immigrant wives who just arrive in Korea need programs to help them learn Korean language and culture, but after they become adapted to the new environment and can speak Korean well, what they need most is a job as many multicultural families are not well-off,” Wang said.
But policies for such spouses fail to address employment, they said.
“Ward offices and support centers for multicultural families offer numerous job training programs. Before taking them, they say it is free and I can have a job afterward. But after taking them, they do nothing,” Jing said.
She said she took six lectures, including baking and word processing. “I tried that hard to get a job, but I’m now working here, irrelevant to the training. I think such centers offer those lectures only to show others that they are doing something for multicultural families, which is not really helpful.”
They also pointed out that in the government’s job policy, native Koreans come prior to multicultural family members, adding people apply double standards in categorizing them.
Jing, a naturalized Korean, said, “If we say we need a job, people say even native Koreans suffer from unemployment, adding jobs for Koreans are more important than ours. If we say, ‘My country China is…’, then they say, ‘You got Korean citizenship. You are Korean.’ They categorize us into this and that according to their needs.”
The immigrant women also called for more education for their children, saying the currently-offered education programs are provided only once per child. “I can’t teach Hangeul to my girl because my pronunciation is not correct. But a child has only one chance to get the free one-year government program. I hope the programs can be extended,” Wang said.