VILLAGE 77, KOMPONG CHAM PROVINCE – It has been more than three years since the brokers first swept through this desolate village, preaching the good life to young women too tired and poor to imagine a future beyond cassava fields and garment factories.

Door to door the brokers went, playing on fantasies of romance and riches, selling the opportunity of a dream life in China.

They worked on the mothers and fathers, too. Mostly middle-aged Cambodian women themselves, some of them got their start in the trade after sending their own daughters on the journey into the unknown.

“Why would they stay? What is there for young people to do here?” said Thim Narin, who works on women’s issues with rights group Adhoc in the province, during an interview at her office earlier this year.

Fields of cashew trees and cassava bushes are the only real source of employment here, and that work is seasonal, leaving Village 77 populated mostly by grandparents watching over children, the middle generation gone in search of cash.

Many of the men go to labor on construction sites in Thailand or Phnom Penh; some go to garment factories here or industrial production lines there; and a less fortunate few wind up as slaves on Thai fishing boats.

For the women—many of them unschooled teens when they leave home—Cambodia offers little more economic opportunity than tedious, low-paid factory work or the risky business of selling beer or sex. So with the blessing of their parents, many migrate.


Lean Heng weeps at her home in Kompong Cham’s Village 77. (Hannah Reyes)

“They have to leave. Anything is better than staying here,” Ms. Narin said.

Despite a ban, women still find their way to Malaysia to work as domestic servants, but the horror stories of rape, abuse and enslavement are well known. Doing hard labor in Thailand’s factories or on construction sites is hardly more appealing. South Korea, too, has been a destination for thousands of desperate young Cambodian women, and many have found a good life there, marrying happily, working in electronics factories and receiving fair pay.

But South Korea requires its migrants to first learn the local language, which costs money that most families here don’t have, and requires a basic education, which is almost as scarce. Life in China, on the other hand, comes with hundreds of dollars in cash—paid up front—and the promise of ongoing remittances to any family whose daughter will marry a stranger.

“They think that in China they can just relax and wait for a portion of the husband’s salary to send home,“ Ms. Narin said. “Korea involves work.”

So, she estimates, about four of every ten young women who leave Kompong Cham end up in China via this informal bride trade. And some of them, she says, become part of the recruitment force themselves, convincing other women in their home villages to marry a Chinese man and keep up the supply.

And regardless of their role, they are all in the bride trade for one reason, according to Ms. Narin: “to settle family debt.”

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Username Taken wrote:One of my wife's cousins got married to Chinese guy a year or so back. Recently, she was at my house and I asked where her hubby was. She said that he had gone to HK for work.
I asked why she hadn't gone with him, and her reply was that she was scared that he might not let her come back (to Cambodia).

Jamie_Lambo wrote:

Username Taken wrote:One of my wife's cousins got married to Chinese guy a year or so back. Recently, she was at my house and I asked where her hubby was. She said that he had gone to HK for work.
I asked why she hadn't gone with him, and her reply was that she was scared that he might not let her come back (to Cambodia).

ive heard something similar to that
i hate anything of this deception trade where they prey on the poor and desperate

SinnSisamouth wrote:

Jamie_Lambo wrote:

Username Taken wrote:One of my wife's cousins got married to Chinese guy a year or so back. Recently, she was at my house and I asked where her hubby was. She said that he had gone to HK for work.
I asked why she hadn't gone with him, and her reply was that she was scared that he might not let her come back (to Cambodia).

ive heard something similar to that
i hate anything of this deception trade where they prey on the poor and desperate

bktrapper?

Police arrested a woman in Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar district on Saturday as she allegedly attempted to take two Cambodian women to China to get married, police said.

The suspect, Och Senghong, 45, was apprehended at the bus station near the Chroy Changvar Bridge, and was yesterday sent to the municipal court, said Municipal Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Unit chief Keo Thea.

Police sent the two would-be brides, Khoun Cherun, 26, and Phat Rom Pherng, 19, to the Ministry of Social Affairs to educate them on the issues surrounding migrant marriages.

“[Senghong] lured the women from Tbong Khmum province to marry in China. Now the court has issued a warrant to detain the suspect in prison,”

Thea said, adding that Senghong had planned to bring the two women first to Vietnam by bus, then to continue on at night to China...