South Korea's human rights watchdog said Wednesday that a new administrative decree asking Korean citizens to present their entire history of mental disorders before marrying a foreign partner can constitute discrimination against those who have suffered from such diseases.
The National Human Rights Commission said that the government's revision of the decree on the marriage brokerage business could infringe on the human rights of former mental disease patients, despite its purpose of improving the nation's international matchmaking process in the wake of a recent murder of a Vietnamese bride by her Korean husband with a history of mental disorders.
The revision has been prepared by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family amid growing calls at home and abroad for thorough health checkups of
Korean men wanting to marry foreign women particularly from underdeveloped countries in Asia.
"The new decree requires people to attach all mental disease test results to a health certificate for an international marriage," the commission said. "It is likely to go against other laws that ban discrimination against mental patients."
Instead, the commission recommended that the documentation on mental disease be restricted to cases of "severe mental disorders" that could
seriously affect the marriage.
In July, a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman was killed a week after she arrived in South Korea by her 47-year-old husband who had been treated more
than 10 times for mental illness, prompting the South Korean government to seek ways to better protect foreign wives.
The human rights watchdog also suggested that criminal history checks include charges on sex trade, given that some husbands had forced their
foreign wives to engage in sex trade after marriage.
According to the national statistics, more than 33,000 marriages were arranged between South Koreans and foreigners in 2009, accounting for 10.8 percent of the country's total marriages.