Hien My Le, '24, Sociology, KI Undergraduate Summer Research Travel Grant, Summer 2023

Thanks to the unparalleled financial support from Harvard’s centers, Korea Institute in particular, I was able to conduct fieldwork for my senior thesis this past summer. The generous funding from Korea Institute specifically enabled me to travel to Korea and base in Seoul for two months, having covered living expenses and the cost of site visits.

My tentative research question of how Vietnamese migrant divorcees in Korea navigate the dissolution of their marriage has propelled me towards the search of genuine conversations with those women. I had identified the research methodology of in-depth interviewing that required me to make multiple site visits to different migrant support centers (이주센터) and women migrants support centers (이주여성센터) to recruit potential participants. Although it was challenging at first to obtain contact information of women who belong to my targeted sample due to the confidential nature of local counseling work, I was fortunate to receive warm welcome and kind assistance from local social workers along the process. I learned from them the complexities of sustaining a multicultural family in an essentially homogenous society like that of Korea, and the persisting conflicts between the foreign wives and their families despite continued efforts on part of social workers to help ameliorate. I am especially grateful to Ms. Park at Korea Center for United Nations Human Rights Policy (사단법인 유엔인권정책센터-KOCUN Seoul Office), who not only went to great lengths to provide me with relevant statistics and refer me to different sources of information, but also showed whole-hearted belief in my research and kindly encouraged to continue forward. Owing to Ms. Park’s resourcefulness and willingness to assist me with my project, I was able to connect with the staff of 사단법인 유엔인권정책센터at Can Tho and Hai Phong offices, the two big cities in Vietnam that have a large number of local women having married into Korean families. These two offices act in close liaison with Seoul office to provide different kinds of support to Vietnamese women migrants who divorced and returned back to Vietnam, either by choice or otherwise. This network has supplemented me with insights into the legal and socio-economic complications that ensue following a divorce between a foreign woman and a Korean spouse, more often than not with the former left in a jeopardized and vulnerable position.

I also reached out to Vietnamese-run community organizations such as Dong Hanh (동행) that have been serving as reliable contact points for Vietnamese migrants who are subjected to unfairness and injustice while residing in Korea. Along with visits to local eateries owned by Vietnamese migrant women themselves, those encounters and conversations have given me a glimpse of the trials and tribulations of these women trying to establish a good life in a foreign land.

As of this moment, I have finished 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Vietnamese women, who were kind enough to entrust their stories of love and loss, and of struggles and triumphs. I am troubled by the ordeal that they have been through, but at the same time inspired endlessly by their grit and infinite capacity for love.

These conversations are the backbone of my thesis project, and therefore the fieldwork in Korea is fundamental to its formulation. I would like to express my gratitude to Korea Institute again for giving me the opportunity to pursue my academic interests and grow as a person along the way.