On the afternoon of January 10, the Daejeon High Court in South Korea tried the case of a South Korean man who attempted to murder his Chinese wife, but the result of the trial made everyone angry - the man only needed to spend 2 and a half years in prison if he had the opportunity to reduce his sentence!
The victim was a 33-year-old Chinese wife who registered her marriage with the 46-year-old South Korean man in 2010. The wife's social and economic status in South Korea was far inferior to that of her husband, and to make matters worse, she began to suffer domestic violence after marriage.
Even knowing that her life would become more difficult after the divorce, the wife kept filing for divorce, but because of her husband's strong objections, it was never possible.
For this reason, she often runs away from home for a long time to live away from her husband, but because the two have children, she still worries about the children returning home.
On June 3, 2022, when the two were having a drink together at three o'clock in the morning, the wife again raised the wish for divorce. The man who had drunk became angry when he heard of the divorce and quarreled with his Chinese wife.
His wife told him that if he did not agree this time, he would call the police and expose his ugly acts of domestic violence before. His wife's words to the police hit the man's sore spot, and he picked up a kitchen knife and brandished it to slash at his wife, who was cut by the knife.
The wife shouted in fright: "Don't do this! What happens to our sons when we all die? The man stopped after being dissuaded, and the wife called the police in shock. In the first instance of the case, the judge sentenced the South Korean man to three years and six months in prison.
The reason given by the judge was: "The defendant committed domestic violence on several occasions in the past, and attempted murder of his wife who filed for divorce constituted a crime. Although the victim was not killed, the probability of death was higher in the circumstances at the time. ”
If the verdict stops there, people's anger will not be so high. After the first instance, the man appealed against the verdict.
The appellate judge held that the defendant's attitude of admitting mistakes helped the victim alleviate the psychological shadow at that time on the grounds that he "confessed to the crime from the time of filing the case for investigation to the appeal", "had a good attitude of reflection", and "promised that he would not commit domestic violence again".
The judge also said that the man took the initiative to "bandage the wounds" of his Chinese wife after the slash, so it was clear that he had a certain attitude of remorse, so the three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in the first instance was "too heavy and unfair."
In the end, the man successfully appealed and only needed two and a half years in prison.
Such an outcome must be unacceptable to everyone, Chinese netizens have also expressed dissatisfaction and anger, and some are worried about the wife's life safety after her husband is released from prison.
The Chinese woman's experience is not an isolated case, and South Korean media have been reporting serious domestic violence problems encountered by foreign women after marrying South Korean men.
As the saying goes, "there are only 0 and 10,000 times of domestic violence", and the worries of netizens are definitely not groundless. In 2018, a foreign woman who had long been abused by her husband in South Korea was eventually killed by her husband, a case that shocked South Korea.
Their three daughters strongly demanded that their father be executed, and it became known from them that the wife had been subjected to domestic violence for nearly 20 years, and that the foreign wife had a similar experience to the Chinese wife mentioned above.
She asked for a divorce but was rejected, and she couldn't escape completely, she could only take her daughter out of home and hide everywhere, sometimes for months in the countryside. But every time she was found by her husband and brought home.
After the two divorced, her husband often harassed the foreign woman in her home, sometimes carrying knives, ropes and tape.
The attitude of the police was indifferent to this and did not interfere too much. In the eyes of the daughters, it is precisely because of the favoritism of the law to the father that the mother will not escape this hell.
Their father also knew this well, and even before killing his mother, he let go of cruel words: "After I kill her, I will spend 6 months in prison at most, and I will be a good man when I come back." ”
In South Korea, domestic violence in international marriages is too serious.
The situation of foreign wives has repeatedly attracted international attention, not only are they discriminated against in society, but some are not protected by South Korean law at all, and it is difficult to obtain equal justice after being subjected to domestic violence or even murder.
In Korea, there is a special word for non-Korean women marrying into Korea, which literally translates to Chinese "foreign wife".
Foreigners make up only 2.5% of the population, but marriage to women from other Asian countries is very prevalent in South Korea.
Since the 1990s, the gap between the rich and the poor in South Korea has widened, and some Korean men have been eliminated from their own marriage market, so they have turned their sights overseas, and even developed an international matchmaker profession, specializing in introducing poor women from other Asian countries to Koreans.
The South Korean cult Unification Church, which led to the assassination of Shinzo Abe, also brainwashed many foreign women during this time and married them to South Korean men.
The mass wedding of the Unification Cult
In the 2020s, South Korean women did not marry, and some local governments even gave bonuses to Korean men who married foreign wives in order to promote population growth and reduce single men.
The 2022 report shows that the overall number of marriages in South Korea is declining, but the proportion of marriages to foreign women has increased by 6.5%.
Statistics on the nationality of foreign wives in South Korea 2013-2017
Most foreign brides are willing to come to South Korea because they have a better chance of employment or survival in South Korea with a developed economy, but the reality is cruel.
Intercountry marriage is not a problem, the question is whether South Korea has the ability to guarantee foreign women.
In 2012, experts from anti-domestic violence organizations believed that non-Korean women were more vulnerable to domestic violence here after marriage.
In 2018, the National Human Rights Commission conducted a survey of 920 foreign wives in South Korea, 42% of whom had experienced domestic violence, far more serious than non-international families.
In July 2019, a video of a South Korean man beating his Vietnamese wife in Jeolla Province attracted the attention of the whole society. In the video, the woman curls up on the ground and is slapped in the face, and her head and abdomen are repeatedly kicked by expressionless men.
When this happened, their 2-year-old son was next to him crying.
The young Vietnamese woman was taken to hospital and diagnosed with a rib fracture. She had experienced domestic violence many times before and could not find a way to save herself, and finally she hid her mobile phone in her son's diaper and took a video of abuse, which was paid attention to by the police.
After his arrest, the husband kept making excuses for himself, saying that he beat people because he drank too much and because his wife didn't speak Korean well enough that he was angry.
Even outrageous reasons like "bad Korean" are sometimes accepted by the police. Many South Koreans discriminate against foreign women who marry and immigrate, believing that they are slaves and can be treated roughly.
The economic and social status of the two sides is unequal, and there are many hidden dangers for the weaker side. South Korean law has played a role in this.
If a foreign woman has an F6 marriage visa, she must be sponsored by her spouse for the twice-yearly renewal of her visa, and they may face deportation if they divorce or the death of their spouse. In the future, the right of permanent residence and naturalization qualifications depend on the man's eyes.
Moreover, many foreign mothers know that if they are repatriated, they may not see their children for the rest of their lives, and there are many cases where women dare not call the police. (If the wife escapes, the violence is often passed on to their children)
As long as the man is dissatisfied, he can use the visa as a threat to prevent the foreign woman from calling the police.
In order to seize this chip, some Korean men do not allow their wives who have no experience in living in South Korea to attend systematic Korean language classes and prohibit them from finding jobs, so that they can never integrate into Korean society and control their own economic resources.
One victim shows his wounds
Even if there is a determination to fight everything to loosen the domestic violence husband, when such a case occurs, the Korean husband can always be forgiven and the sentence reduced.
South Korea's inherent tendency to view domestic violence as an "internal family problem", coupled with the fact that foreign wives are more likely to be neglected than Korean women, makes the crime cost of domestic violence for foreign wives lower.
Of reported incidents of domestic violence in the past five years, only 13 per cent were arrested, 8.5 per cent were prosecuted and 0.9 per cent were jailed.
There are also people who, like the first case in this article, were given leniency despite being imprisoned.
In addition, in order to show its "humanitarianism", South Korea has not carried out the death penalty since 1997, and even if domestic violence escalates into a wife murder case, it is impossible to impose the death penalty.
Bloody cases and the loss of young women's lives have not been systematically solved. In 2020, in order to reduce domestic violence against foreign women, a bill promoted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and the Ministry of Justice of South Korea officially came into effect.
It stipulates that men with a record of domestic violence can no longer marry foreign women in South Korea. If you look closely, you will see that this is a paradox, and it is difficult to create a deterrent effect.
Foreign wives had little equal access to the police and case, and even if a man was found guilty, the bill did not protect the interests of the woman who was initially victimized.
And wouldn't South Korean men who marry foreign women double down on their restrictions and threaten foreign wives to prevent them from calling the police because of such a bill?
The South Korean government has been scratching its neck on the topic for years.
They argue that some foreign women who need to marry and immigrate are severely subjected to domestic violence because they do not understand the language, do not understand Korean culture, and have difficulty communicating with Koreans — in other words, their own problems.
As a result, the women were required to receive 400 hours of language lessons, and they were also taught "cultural education" and "family concept education."
Foreign women attending classes at an activity center
This practice has been criticized by South Korean women's rights advocates, who are too obsessed with "cultural identity", ignore legal protections for women, and disguise discrimination against foreign women: "Why do they have to go to class when they don't do anything wrong?" Those who should really be in class are those who are abusive! ”
Indeed, differences in nationality and culture are not the root of the problem. Disrespect for women and cultural tolerance of domestic violence are the essence of the problem. The experience of foreign brides is just a magnifying glass for the problem of domestic violence in South Korea.
In 2021, a report sponsored by the South Korean government showed that one-third of adult women in South Korea had experienced violence against women, usually by boyfriends, husbands or ex-intimate partners.
There is an old saying in South Korea that is used as a proverb: "Dried fish is the same as a woman, it is better if it has been beaten", which fully shows the "rationality" of domestic violence in Korean culture.
With the development of the times, more and more young Koreans, especially Korean women, dare to stand up against such cultural waste, but the government's response is still insufficient.
We hope that change will come and that tragedy will not be repeated again and again...