The reunification that nobody saw coming.
The strained relationship between the North and the South Koreas is no news to the world. With their opposing political ideologies and ways of life, the populations on either side of the DMZ naturally find it difficult to connect despite essentially sharing the same roots. But exceptions occur occasionally, sometimes through a dating agency based in Seoul.
The dating service, called Nam Nam Buk Nyo, is run by a couple, Hong Seung Woo from South Korea and his wife, Joo Jeong Ok, who defected from the North in 2009. After leaving North Korea, Joo resided in China secretly for a year before escaping to South Korea. Initially, she enjoyed the freedom of her everyday life until the lifestyle difference started being a problem. “The choices, the consumerism was overwhelming…Even ordering Starbucks was difficult. I’d never had coffee in my life and didn’t understand the names of the drinks,” Joo told the media in an old interview.
As a solution to this, Kim decided to marry Hong, “a lovely South Korean man,” when she saw it as “the best way to join this society.” She then started to help Hon run the dating service that he had set up in 2006 for matching South Korean men with North Korean women. Nam Nam Buk Nyo was the first dating service of its kind in South Korea, and by 2016, they had already matched over 550 such couples.
According to Joo and Hong, there is a mutual incentive for both parties in such a relationship. The South Korean men who sought their services mostly had the same complaint that the South Korean women have very high standards. Hong recalled his own experience, saying that after divorcing his first wife, a South Korean, he was rejected three times because he “wasn’t rich enough and wasn’t a provider.” For North Korean women, on the other hand, South Korean men seem “more respectful of gender equality,” according to Joo, since “North Korean men want to be the king of the house.”
The practice of South Korean men marrying foreign women is not new. But usually, it is Vietnam or the Philippines that they turn to in hopes of finding a suitable bride. Hong, however, said that more men are getting inclined toward marrying a North Korean woman “with all the difficulties in the interracial marriages.” According to Hong, the success rate of these marriages is boosted by the fact that the ancestral roots of the couple remain the same.
For North Korean women, there aren’t huge problems learning the language and culture…We come from a common ancestry, the same blood, and that makes these marriages successful.
— Hong Seung Woo
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