hankyoreh

Tuha (not her real name) is a Vietnamese woman who was abandoned by a South Korean man, her husband, after giving birth to two daughters. Her experiences were restructured based on two interviews with her, notes on the counseling she received at the Seongdong Migrant Workers’ Center, located in Seoul, and a petition which she submitted to the Seoul Family Court.

At 24 years of age, I have been married, divorced and have two beautiful daughters - somewhere.

Four years ago, in August 2003, a woman in living in our village who had gotten married to a South Korean man visited me at my house. She told my parents that she wanted to introduce me to a 40-year-old divorced South Korean man. Until then I hadn’t had a boy friend and hadn’t thought about marriage. However, her visit reminded me of friends who had said they were living happily after having married South Korean men.

My mother asked the woman, ‘‘Is he a good man? Is he a reliable man? He and his ex-wife didn’t get along with each other because they had no children. The couple recently got divorced but they had been living apart for a long time,’’ she replied. A few days later, I met the Korean man. We met just once, but he told me that he wanted to marry me and gave me US$1,000 to prepare for the marriage. When we registered our marriage two months later, I found out that he was 47 years old.

We had problems with language but my husband treated me well. A few days after we came to Korea, he spoke to me by looking words up in a dictionary. He said, ‘‘If you have a baby, you won’t be lonely even if you are home alone.’’

A month after having gotten married, I got pregnant. Sometime before I was ready to deliver, he said, suddenly, ‘‘When my baby is born, I am going to send him or her to live with my sister in the United States.’’

‘‘Such a thing must never happen,’’ I said.

I gave birth to a pretty daughter with sparkling eyes. After I was discharged from the hospital, I came home only to find that my daughter was gone. Even her clothes and nursing bottles were missing. I was in shock. Before we had gone to the hospital, my husband had said, ‘‘Infants should be taken care of in the hospital.’’ But now, he said, ‘‘I will leave my daughter in the care of my sister living in the countryside. You are too young to bring up a child.’’

I couldn’t eat properly for two months and I couldn’t stop crying. I missed her so much.

Then my husband said, ‘‘Our daughter is at my ex-wife’s house.’’ They were said to have lived together for 21 years without children before getting divorced. I was told that they had heard he could marry a Vietnamese woman, have a baby and divorce her after giving her some money. In such cases, the husbands most certainly gain custody of the child. I also learned that he had met me just a month after getting his divorce. He and his former wife had conspired to deceive me. I was dumbfounded.

‘‘Even if we is poor, we never give our children away for money,’’ I told him. My husband said, ‘‘Give the baby to my ex-wife and let’s have more babies and live happily together.’’ But I refused. How could I give my children to other people? I wanted to sue him but I couldn’t speak Korean and there was no one I could trust in Korea. My husband tried to soothe me, saying that he had come to be fond of me. For me, he was the first man I had ever known and I had also grown attached to him. Three months after bearing my daughter, I became pregnant with another child.

After eight months together, my husband said, ‘‘We have to move out of our house because our lease is expiring.’’ As the lease for the house was signed in the name of his former wife, he couldn’t do anything, or so he said. He also said that his ex-wife had transferred all of their property, putting it all under her name before the divorce so that he wouldn’t betray her. She was also reported to have told him that if he didn’t divorce me, he would be left with nothing, no house and no money. My husband said he would reconcile with her to get his property back because without money he couldn’t look after me and our children.

I appealed to my husband, saying that I loved him, but he still wanted a divorce. I finally said, ‘‘I will divorce you on the condition that I can take our second child to Vietnam.’’ But he did not agree with this. He still wanted me to go to Vietnam for a while after our divorce, however. According to him, his plan was to reunite with his ex-wife, recover his money while I was in Vietnam, and then buy me a house and send the baby to me.

In July 2005, our beautiful second daughter was born. A week later, my husband demanded that I give him a divorce; he was so cold, but all I could do was cry. In exchange for divorcing him, he promised to take care of me and told me he would finally allow me to meet my children. Believing his promise, I agreed to the divorce. About 20 days later, he and his ex-wife were reportedly reunited once again. A month after our divorce, I was allowed to meet my first daughter one time, but I never saw her again. After that, my husband changed his telephone number and address and disappeared with my daughters. I am a mother of two lost daughters whom I will never be able to meet.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]