[Vnbiz] Between Worlds: Korean-Born Children in Vietnam

[Tai Phan]

  Between Worlds: Korean-Born Children in Vietnam

 "Lai Han Quoc" is the Vietnamese phrase referring to children born to South
Korean fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Their history began in 1992, when
South Korean enterprises started doing business in Vietnam after the two
countries established diplomatic relations.

These days, many new-generation Lai Han Quoc's are found in Vietnam. These
so-called second-generation Lai Han Quoc's were born to Vietnamese mothers
in South Korea but sent to Vietnam because their mothers cannot afford to
raise them here.

The mothers send their children to their own parents' homes in Vietnam,
either because they are too badly off to raise their children in Korea or
because they are embroiled in discord with their Korean husbands. Although
the children hold Korean citizenship, they know neither Korean language nor
culture. In Vietnam, they become illegal aliens due to their status as
foreigners, and are entitled to neither regular education nor basic welfare
benefits, including inoculations.

Mi-young is a four-year-old girl in a village in the southern Vietnamese
province of Tay Ninh. Born to a 40-year-old Korean father, who is a sailor,
and a 24-year-old Vietnamese mother, she is now living in Vietnam as an
illegal alien. Her parents met through a marriage agency in 2003, and
Mi-young was born the following year.

But they continued to quarrel due to communication problems, cultural
differences and monetary issues. In late 2006, the father told the mother to
go back to Vietnam with Mi-young. Since then, the girl has been staying with
her maternal grandparents in Vietnam. After bringing her daughter to her
parents' home in Vietnam, her mother returned to Korea to make money.

Without Korean citizenship, she asked her husband to vouch for her visa
extension, but he refused. She then had to move from one workplace to
another as an undocumented worker but was finally apprehended by law
enforcement officers in April this year. She has since been held at the
Seoul Immigration Office in Mok-dong.

A year and a half after she was parted from her mother, Mi-young also became
an illegal alien in Vietnam. Her mother left her behind in Vietnam and
returned to Korea with her daughter's passport, promising to come back soon
but could not keep her promise, nor could the daughter extend her visa in
Vietnam.

In her maternal grandparents' home in Vietnam, Mi-young likes to look at a
stack of photos that show her father smiling and hugging her mother in a
park overlooking the sea off Busan, or Mi-young herself nestling in her
father's arms on the rooftop of their home in Busan.

Her 50-year-old maternal grandfather said, "That little girl likes to look
at the photos for hours." While looking at the photos, Mi-young exclaims,
"appa, appa!" (Korean for "daddy"). A year ago when she first came to
Vietnam, the little girl cried, saying, "bap, bap!" (Korean for "rice" or
"food"). But except for "appa", she has now forgotten her Korean vocabulary,
She is not entitled to attend kindergarten or school in Vietnam, nor can her
maternal grandfather, who earns a mere 50,000 dong (equivalent to about
W3,100) a day, afford to send her to an expensive Korean school in Vietnam.

(englishnews at chosun.com )
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vnbiz/attachments/20080513/9b0575d9/attachment.html