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Matchmakers Bring North and South Korean Couples Together

02/12/09December 2, 2009

Almost 70 percent of those who leave North Korea to get into South Korea are women. Many of them make the dangerous journey alone, leaving behind families or even losing them on the way. Once they arrive, many find it difficult to make friends or to marry. Now online match-making services are pairing women from the North with men from the South.

https://p.dw.com/p/LsH1
Men and women playing a game in an event organised by matchmaking company in Seoul
Men and women playing a game in an event organised by matchmaking company in SeoulImage: AP

In South Korea, young singles usually rely on friends and family to help them find marriage partners. But for North Koreans who have defected here, that is often not an option. Lee Hyo Ri, not her real name, arrived in South Korea in 2002 with only her father.

Now in her early forties, she says she felt lonely and turned to the Internet to find a partner. “I knew a woman who started one of these dating services for North Korean women to meet South Korean guys, so I thought I could trust it.”

Dating services

Lee was paired up with a South Korean man who she married soon after. Online entrepreneurs have capitalized on the arrival of thousands of unmarried North Korean women to the south. A handful of dating agencies have sprung up that cater to North-South matchmaking.

Hong Seung-Ul runs such a service. He says he got the idea to start it after he married a North Korean woman himself. He says North-South couples do not have many problems, since they speak the same language and have the same culture. The only differences are political, socialism and capitalism, but he says most do not really care about that.

Expensive affair

Hong says women can sign up on his website for free, but for men, the service is not cheap. They pay close to two thousand dollars. It is the high prices that have some refugee advocates concerned that these dating agencies treat the North Koreans like commodities and that the women could be abused. At least one North Korean has been killed by her South Korean husband in recent years.

Lee Hae-Young heads the Association of North Korean Defectors in Seoul. “I think that for both North Korean women and South Korean men, the opportunity to start a family is great, especially for the women. It makes it easier for them to adjust to life here in South Korea. But, the agencies that offer these services need to be responsible. They may be using these women just to make money.”

Security concerns

There is also a worry that Internet agencies may put the women or their families in North Korea in danger by publishing their pictures. The North Korean government is known to punish the families of defectors. But North-South matchmaker Mr. Hong, says he takes precautions to protect his clients.

He says that no pictures are on the Web site. Instead, photos are mailed to potential couples. As for defector Lee Hyo-ri, she says she does not feel like an object and thinks that South Korean men are better husbands than North Korean men.

“My husband here is proud of me, he brags that his wife is from North Korea, it makes me shy, but he really supports me.” After years of loneliness, she says her husband has made her feel at home in South Korea.

Author: Jason Strother (Seoul)
Editor:Grahame Lucas