hankyoreh

Retipeueongni

On the afternoon of Mar. 6, two Chinese nationals studying in South Korea were looking around the reception area on the first floor of Seongdong District Office in Seoul. They were there to report a change of address.

Before long, they were spotted by Retipeueongni, 28, from Vietnam, who directed them to the reception window for foreigners.

Jin Jihong, 44, from China, asked them in Chinese what they needed, and Kim So-yeong, 43, from the Philippines, promptly handed them a general application form. In less than 10 minutes, the Chinese students had registered their new address.

Seongdong District was the first district in Seoul to create a dedicated reception window for foreigners in July 2011. Kim has been working there since then as a contract public servant, and Jin and Retipeueongni joined her last year through a local community work program.

“Just from the fact that they walked so far to get here, I can tell whether they‘re here to ask for personal assistance or for some other reason,” Kim said.

All of the workers are women who immigrated to South Korea to get married. While they call themselves “happy wives,” adapting to life in South Korea has not been any easier for them than for most immigrant wives.

Jin, who came to South Korea in 2004, hardly left her house for her first five years here. As soon as her first child was born, doctors found a hole in the child’s kidney and performed an operation. Since her husband’s parents and her mother had all passed away, she invited her father to come and help. He applied twice for a visa, but was denied both times.

After that, Jin said, she spent nearly all her time at home without even learning Korean. She started to change after her child came back crying from his first day at kindergarten and said his teacher didn’t like him.

“I wanted to find out what had happened but I couldn’t speak Korean. I just held my son tight and sobbed. A year later, the teacher said my son was doing fine and told me not to worry, but I can’t express how I felt in words,” Jin said.

Kim, who came to South Korea in 1997, sent both of her daughters to the Philippines and got to work making money. She sent her oldest daughter to the Philippines one year after coming to South Korea and sent her second daughter there too after she was born in 2000. It was around that time that she and her husband separated.

She made money, working in the morning at an employment agency and in the afternoon as an English teacher. When her second daughter was six years old, she brought her back to South Korea, determined to live together no matter how hard it was.

Since 2011, Kim has been working as a contract public servant at the childcare and family department of Seongdong District, a job she got on the recommendation of a center for foreign workers that was familiar with her situation.

“The visitor I remember the most was a woman with three kids who had suddenly lost her husband and had no idea how to get by. When I visited her house, she was living in a shabby rooftop room that didn’t even have a bathroom. I let her know where she could get assistance and went to the hospital with her,” Kim said.

On Mar. 6, Kim and the others helped eight “multicultural” visitors at the district office between 3 and 5 pm. They said they were happy just to be able to help other people.

Retipeueongni came to South Korea after a relative introduced her to the man who would become her husband in Vietnam in 2011.

“Sometimes the work can be difficult, but I see this as a valuable opportunity,” she said.

She also had a request for South Koreans. “I wish that Koreans would see that we’re all people even if we’re not very good at Korean and that they would accept us just the way we are without any bias about ’multicultural families.‘”

By Seo Young-ji, staff reporter

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