It was in 2007 that a newspaper picture showed a dozen young women in a Southeast Asian country standing in line before a couple men from Korea in what was described as a matchmaking session. By the time the picture was published here, the international marriage brokerage that resembles human trafficking had created anti-Korean sentiment in the countries from which many brides came to Korea.

It took five long years to bring legislation to prohibit such indecent practices. A revision to the Law on the Management of Marriage Agencies was among the scores of bills that passed the National Assembly on the last few days of 2011.
The revised law contained provisions to punish marriage brokers introducing women under the age of 18 and introducing two or more women to an applicant at the same time with up to three years in jail and a maximum fine of 20 million won. The law requires notarization of documents providing the personal data of Korean men seeking foreign brides and raised the punishment for running an unregistered marriage brokerage business to a maximum five years’ imprisonment and 50 million won in fines from three years and 20 million won.

As Korea is slow to take corrective measures, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Philippine authorities have sometimes banned matchmaking activities by Korean agencies. In the Assembly, 14 different bills concerning international marriage brokerage had been proposed by different groups of lawmakers over the years before the Women and Family Affairs Committee combined them to a single bill.

While we are dismayed by the inefficiency of our lawmaking process, questions arise as to how effective the law will be in regulating marriage brokerage outside the country by an increasing number of agencies. As of the end of 2010, 1,253 agencies were registered with the authorities for local and overseas business. Anyone is free to open a brokerage business with a 100 million won deposit and clean police background check.

Over 30,000 international marriages are reported each year. Healthy matchmaking services are essential to establishing trouble-free multicultural homes in this country. It is undesirable that arrangement of international marriages is left entirely up to commercial business. The recommendation that responsible public organizations engage in matchmaking services to provide a model and expedite the process of natural selection in this particular business area is worth consideration.