South Korea has been experiencing a baby boom-let of late, involving the fruits of mixed marriages between South Korean men and women they’ve imported from other Asian countries. Mothers come from China, Vietnam, the Philippines among others. South Korea, like China, has been experiencing its own dearth of men – especially in the countryside. Though South Korea has no one-child policy, the same trend towards falling birth rates that other modernized countries have have driven poorer segments of the male population to marry imported brides.

Since it became apparent that China’s one-child policy and the unbalanced importance Chinese families placed on having a male heir, Chinese men in the countryside have apparently been doing the same, though their brides more likely come from bordering states like Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar. The first batch of Chinese men born under the one-child policy came of an age in 2006 at the age of 25, during which young men – especially in the countryside – are expected to have already married. Vietnam is a popular source of brides – called “Straying Cows” in Vietnamese – who are typically kidnapped from the Hmong tribes along the border with China and sold on to bachelors upwards of 5000 to 6000rmb (US$730 to US$875).

However, as opposed to South Korea, so local and/or so under-wraps is the trade that no news has come out of the countryside about the kind of cultural and social dislocation the infants and their mothers may be experiencing.

Resistance is futile.

Further Reading:  NYT, Economist, Now Public