Imported brides popular as money mixes Asian marriages

Asian men from rich countries such as Japan and South Korea are increasingly seeking brides from poorer ones like Vietnam and the Philippines -- as economically liberated local women get picky.

Marriages between Japanese men and foreign women shot up 73 percent between 1995 and 2006, to 35,993, according to the latest government survey. Most of the women were Filipinas, followed by Chinese.

"Asian brides -- notably Chinese and Filipina -- remain popular in the countryside, where it's quite hard to find young women," said Toshio Esaka, president of dating agency Royal in Osaka, western Japan.

"But nowadays, it's getting harder even downtown as a lot of young Japanese women are economically independent and prefer to remain single," Esaka said.

In South Korea, more than 35 percent of fishermen and farmers who married in the 12 months to May 2009 took foreign brides, mainly from China and Vietnam, government statistics show.

Both examples point to the role of cash and lifestyle in Cupid's quiver -- it is mainly the less marketable men in the richer countries who look abroad for a wife when they can't find one at home.

The story is repeated in Singapore -- Southeast Asia's wealthiest society -- Hong Kong and Taiwan, and often involves marriage brokers.

An online matchmaking site in Singapore, where lower-income men often fear rejection by better-educated local women, offers low-cost tours to Vietnam on which men can meet "medically examined and certified virgins".

On the other side of the transaction, the women are usually so impoverished that even poorer men from rich countries offer hope of a better life.

"Due to poverty in their families and because they want to help improve the situation, Cambodian women decide to marry foreigners," said Ya Navuth, director of a Cambodian group which fights human trafficking.

"Some women meet good spouses, but some have been cheated and sold from one 'owner' to another," he said.

This sense of ownership often leads to abuse of foreign brides, rights activists say.

"Many of the cases we are dealing with involve Asian women being abused by their husbands," says Fermi Wong, founder of Hong Kong Unison, which helps ethnic minorities in the city.

"They feel helpless because many of them do not have any relatives in Hong Kong and speak little English or Chinese."

Mainland China, Vietnam and the Philippines provide most of the foreign brides for Hong Kong men.

The potential for exploitation of helpless girls from impoverished families has led some countries -- both importers and exporters of brides -- to put restrictions in place:

Mail-order brides from the Philippines were once a common phenomenon but tales of the women being abused by their foreign husbands abroad prompted the government to outlaw the practice.

Despite this, various "marriage broker" agencies get around the law by bringing in foreign men to select their prospective brides before flying off with them.

While it was once mainly Western men who sought Filipina brides, in recent years Japanese and South Korean men have also turned to the archipelago in search of partners.

Indonesia is considering a proposal that a 55,000-dollar "security guarantee" should be lodged by foreign men who marry Indonesian women.

If the couple divorce, the wife will be entitled to take the money. If they stick together for at least 10 years, they can claim it as "shared property".

But couples would be able to get around the requirement by marrying abroad.

Cambodia in March suspended marriages between South Koreans and its citizens for several weeks and introduced new requirements for the process over concerns about human trafficking.

Among "importing" countries, South Korea itself launched a crackdown two years ago on matchmaking agencies which use racial stereotypes or distorted information to help Koreans find foreign brides.

Activists say that because of false advertising some women end up with spouses who have few assets or who are ill, alcoholic or of difficult character.

Taiwan also took action, banning commercial international match-making services last year after a series of high-profile criminal cases, including one in which a man was jailed for enslaving and torturing his Vietnamese wife.

More than 434,000 Taiwanese are married to foreigners, usually from China and Southeast Asia, according to the immigration bureau.

While China is mainly an exporter of brides, import demand is expected to soar because of the one-child policy which has contributed to sex-specific abortions and a shortage of girls.

A study by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences this year concluded that more than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without women to marry by 2020.

Already, young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner.

The human trafficking is not new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside, said Reverend Chun Ki-Won, head of the Durihana Association, which offers aid to refugees.

White rice linked to higher diabetes risk

A US-based study on Monday linked eating white rice to higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and backed long-held claims that brown rice is healthier than the white variety.

People who ate at least five servings of white rice per week had a 17 per cent greater risk of developing diabetes than those who consumed less than one serving per month, Harvard School of Public Health scientists found.

Examining data from over 197,000 adults for up to 22 years, the study also found that consuming two or more servings of brown rice per week was associated with an 11 per cent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who ate less than one serving a month.

Patients with diabetes have high blood sugar levels, which are linked to the body's inability to produce enough insulin in order to properly break down sugars and starches into glucose for energy.

"We believe replacing white rice and other refined grains with whole grains, including brown rice, would help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes," said lead author Qi Sun, of Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

While still lower than in Asian countries, US rice consumption is increasingly rapidly. More than 70 per cent of the rice consumed in the United States is white, the researchers noted.

According to the researchers, replacing just a third of a typical daily serving of white rice with the same amount of brown rice each day would lower the risk of type 2 diabetes by 16 per cent.

They also found that replacing white rice with other whole grains, such as barley and whole wheat, could reduce risk of the disease by 36 per cent.

"From a public health point of view, whole grains, rather than refined carbohydrates, such as white rice, should be recommended as the primary source of carbohydrates for the US population," said senior author Frank Hu.

"These findings could have even greater implications for Asian and other populations in which rice is a staple food."

Rice loses most of its bran and germ -- its most important sources of fiber and nutrients -- when it is refined to produce the white variety.

Brown rice, which retains the bran and germ, has more fibre, minerals, vitamins and phytochemicals than white rice. It also usually does not cause blood sugar levels to spike as much as the white variety.

Job-seekers reject offers

THE pendulum has swung in favour of job-seekers, as the economy improves and companies get hungry for workers.

More employers say they are getting the snub from these people, who are holding out for higher salaries and better benefits, according to a quarterly survey by recruiter Hudson.

Its poll of more than 500 employers from key business sectors in Singapore show 40 per cent have received rejections of their job offers in the last six months. In contrast, only 21 per cent have not encountered any refusal.

The common reasons given for the rejection are: higher salary expectations (55 per cent) and better offers from other companies (51 per cent). About 38 per cent say the candidates told them their employers had made a counter-offer while 10 per cent lost out because their benefits were not good enough.

The Hudson's survey, released yesterday, also shows 57 per cent of bosses want to raise their headcount in the third quarter - a peak never achieved since the first quarter of 2001. It is also a rise from 54 per cent in the previous quarter and more than double the 26 per cent reported a year ago.

The top hirers are banking and financial services (67 per cent), information technology and telecommunications (64 per cent) and healthcare and life sciences (50 per cent). Growth in Asia and improved business sentiments are fuelling the drive to hire, said Hudson Singapore's executive general manager Georgie Chong.

RM3,000 to live in M'sia city

JUST how much do Malaysian city dwellers need to live a comfortable middle-class life?

One minister says RM3,000 (S$1,280) a month should be enough, if they adjusted their lifestyles and cut out luxuries such as satellite TV and cars.

'This city is liveable for those earning RM3,000 a month, provided they do not live in luxurious places,' Federal Territories Minister Raja Nong Chik Raja Zainal Abidin said last week.

It is a comment that has angered ordinary Malaysians, many of whom are bracing themselves for expected cuts in subsidies on basic goods like sugar and petrol.

Their government is seeking to slash subsidies to stem a swelling subsidies bill.

Keeping the prices of essential items such as flour, sugar, bread and highway tolls below their market prices cost the country about RM73 billion a year. But plans to slash subsidies have drawn dismay.