Last year saw divorces between South Korean men and Vietnamese women rise at the fastest pace in 13 years, according to data from Statistics Korea Monday.
Among the total 4,218 divorces filed by international couples, which saw a 1.8 percent increase from 4,175 cases in 2023, divorces involving Vietnamese women rose by 8.3 percent to 1,215, up from 1,122 the previous year. This is the fastest increase since 2011, when it rose 24.4 percent.
Marriages involving Korean men and Vietnamese women account for the largest proportion of international marriages in Korea. A total of 5,017 Korean men and Vietnamese women tied the knot last year, up 1.9 percent from the previous year, accounting for 32.1 percent of the total 15,624 marriages with foreign women, followed by China (16.7 percent), Thailand (13.7 percent) and Japan (7.5 percent).
Experts suggest that the increasing trend of Vietnamese women filing for divorce after acquiring Korean nationality is one of the key factors driving the increase.
Last year, there were 771 marriages between Korean women and Vietnamese men, with 728 of them being remarriages. This suggests that many of the Korean wives in these marriages are likely to be naturalized citizens from Vietnam.
“It’s reasonable to conclude that many Vietnamese women who acquired Korean citizenship remarried Vietnamese men,” said an official from Statistics Korea.
Foreign nationals are eligible to gain Korean citizenship if they have lived in the country for more than two years while married to a Korean spouse, or if they have been married for more than three years and have resided here for at least a year.
Some women in Vietnam spend large sums of money to marry South Korean men, according to Vietnamese news reports.
An interview conducted by Vietnamese media outlet VNExpress with a woman in her 20s who was preparing to marry a Korean man, revealed that she spent 3 million Vietnamese dong ($117) on a local broker to find a Korean husband. She said her goal was to settle in Korea through marriage, secure a stable job, and then divorce after two or three years.
cjh@heraldcorp.com
