are a real mix and turmoil right now. I read the LA TImes article this morning, and something that stood out for me was the subtle point that if farmers don't reproduce, nobody will farm, at least not on that particular farmer's land. That's nothing particularly Korean; it's a common theme in most farming cultures - "this land is what keeps us alive and feeds us; I provide for my children with the fruit of my land; this land will keep them fed after I die (or get old and infirm)."

I don't have a good sense of where that type of thinking will go; it appears it's still common for the time being. However, people are leaving the rural areas in droves, and for the usual reasons. To some extent, they don't know when they've got it good. I was in Korea in the Peace Corps in the early 70s, and while you didn't see serious deprivation, there were plenty of poor people, rural and urban. Farming was rice and vegetables to feed your house, then your village, then some left over to sell at local market if you had any. But when I visited in 1994 with my (Korean) wife, we went to her family area not far from where I'd served, and the farmers still did the rice & vegetables, but also had cash crops - fancy mushrooms in the pine woods, ginseng, tobacco - and were living much more comfortably. Good water & sewage, electricity, much better roads. Yet people were still leaving for the cities.

So what we have is a society that's not really Westernizing, but is urbanizing. It's urbanizing in an Asian fashion rather than a Western fashion, but there are common themes to such a move, among which is the change in gender roles. This article on purchasing foreign brides might reflect nothing more than the loss of young women from the Korean countryside, but it may also be about whether young women have any interest in being part of that rural, farming culture. I suspect most do not.

I hear from many Korean women, some my age who have divorced, that Korean men often buy into role stereotypes that can make marriages difficult. Some of the language reflects this. The words for wife include "house person", "inside person", and for husband terms like "Owner", "outside lord". We as foreigners living there heard that women truly had the power in the household, that they often dictated finances and made the major decisions, and there was some truth to this. Often, though, we saw and heard about husbands who expected unquestioning obedience, and often the woman with power, who ran things, was the husband's mother, who could be very dictatorial towards her daughters-in-law. This all becomes difficult to uphold in an urbanizing society where the both genders will have salaried jobs outside the home, although certainly the women earn lower pay, and where mothers-in-law may live some distance away, with diminished influence.

In short, it's interesting times in Korea - things like a woman prime minister juxtaposed with purchased brides from abroad. I'll watch to see what Korean media and Korean women have to say about this story.

for a Global Economy.

outsourcing would catch on as it has...?

There's at least one very positive thing about this phenomenon. It's a form of legal, encouraged immigration, in which people from poor surroundings leave and end up somewhere more prosperous, with benefits to both countries. There's something creepy about this particular scenario, though. Why would any man want to do this? I don't want to get married in any case, but why go to all this trouble and expense, only to end up with someone with whom you can't even speak?

Also, that reminds me, there's an error here. I think the sentence reads "who are these Korean boys supposed to marry..." or something like that. It should be "whom."

This type of thing is pretty commonplace all over Asia. Take a look at China, where female infanticide was so common back in the day - boys were prized, girls spelled bad luck for the family - that the last estimate I read was 130:100 ratio, that's men versus women. If your firstborn's a girl, your grandmother takes it away quietly, and you try again and hope for a boy. That's just the way it was.

Now this problem is much more prevalent in the poor countryside and villages, and less so in the cities. Boys are raised to work on the farm, do hard labor, etc etc, girls for domestic work and performing what tasks their mother and grandmothers taught and required them to do. For both the boys and girls, it's not a pleasant lifestyle, but it's all you've ever known all your life.

Until you see what it's like outside your farm. The young men are saddled with a duty to their families and relatives and thus must remain in the village and farm for the remainder of their life - while the young women do bear responsibility, but on a different level. They are freer to leave the nest, head for the big city, and send dowry money home to their parents upon marriage.