New Laws Implemented Involving Older Men Marrying Young Wives

Admit it: we’ve all seen the couples with the vast age discrepancies. The white haired-heads mixed into the crowds at the strip clubs. 51-year old actor Doug Hutchinson marrying 16-year old Courtney Stodden in Las Vegas.  And most notably for the Hmong community, the older men who insist upon leaving (or sharing) their wives and children to bring home a young bride from Laos. But news flash: new laws have been implemented that may make men think twice before trying to get their hands on a young bride.

It has been reported that a growing trend sweeping through Southeast Asian nations is that elderly male foreigners are no longer allowed to marry young women from their respective countries. According to new marriage regulations, the Cambodian Government issued an age limit for male foreigners over the age of 50 to be outlawed from marrying Cambodian women in the country, under new rules designed to crack down on sham marriages and human trafficking. Cambodia, which is a country home to a small population of Hmong, has enforced this law in an effort to prevent fake marriages and human trafficking. The Cambodian government has been aware of cases documented by rights groups where Cambodian women were sent into prostitution or used as slaves in their husband's home country. In addition, foreigners who earn less than $2,550 per month are also barred from wedding local women.

Koy Kuong, spokesperson from the Cambodian Foreign Ministry, says that marriages between old men and young women are considered "inappropriate,” and foreign men who wish to marry nationals, “must earn a high salary to ensure that Cambodian women can live a decent life.” The regulations will hopefully discourage local marriages in which a foreign husband and local wife look like "a grandfather and a granddaughter.” The new regulations were issued in response to a recent rapid increase in the number of foreign nationals, particularly South Koreans, who have married and subsequently abused Cambodian women, Kuong said. Reports of scandals involving marriages between young Cambodian women and older South Korean men have been surfacing, including one case where Korean authorities filed charges against a man who murdered his Cambodian wife to collect $1 million from a life insurance policy. According to the Korean newspaper Joong Ang Daily, the 45-year-old Korean husband fed his 20-year-old Cambodian wife sleeping pills before setting their house on fire. Prior to the event, he took out six life insurance policies on her.  The Cambodian foreign ministry has since sent a diplomatic note to all the embassies and consulates in the country informing them of the new regulations, which came into effect on March 1, 2011.

"A very old man who retired from work and is jobless and marries a very young wife from Cambodia is similar to human trafficking," Kuong said. "We don't want our Cambodian women working as a slave for the family."

Similar laws have been echoed in Laos as well, which is home to one of the largest overseas populations of Hmong. Members of the Lao National Assembly who are calling for stricter screening of marriages between Lao nationals and foreigners, argue that those marriages are not, in many cases, purely based on love. According to the U.S. Lao Embassy website, should a man want to marry a woman from Laos, he cannot be more than 20 years older than his future bride. “This idea has definitely been addressed with the Lao government,” said a spokesperson from the Lao Embassy. Similarly to the regulations of Cambodia, men must prove that they are not married in another country, meaning that legit divorce papers must be presented before he is allowed to marry woman from Laos. They also have to prove they have steady jobs, a bank account with savings, a place to live, and also pass a medical exam as to not pass along disease to their future brides. “These issues may have been overlooked in the past because of the sensitive nature of the topic,” the spokesperson said, “but it is a serious issue now.”

Additionally, there are people who profit from promoting and arranging such marriages, as an unidentified National Assembly member commented: "There are companies who do businesses as matchmakers and marriage brokers. In some cases, you see some really young Lao women - and maybe some older ones but no more than 28 years-old, marrying a Lao man from overseas in his 60s or 70s. How can you believe that that is true love? So we need to really investigate and check out their backgrounds before approving because such marriages hurt Lao women' honor and dignity."

Thailand, another country with a significant Hmong population, has also followed suit: the Ministry of Interior are bringing a new proposal before the Cabinet prohibiting foreigners over the age of 50 from marrying Thai nationals. According to a Ministry spokesperson, statistics show that many older foreigners are marrying much younger Thai women, which is not appropriate and often leads to many problems. "Many older foreigners seem to marry Thai women so they can stay in Thailand under less strict requirements. Many of these people seem to come to Thailand simply to marry much younger girls. In many cases they are old enough to be their father. I am concerned that these people are attempting to circumvent the rules by marrying innocent Thai women. If these people don't have enough money to retire then they shouldn't be here and become a burden to Thailand. For those people already married, the income must be also 800,000 Baht ," said Tawatchai Suksoom of the Ministry of Interior.

And ceev fab nawb: most of the other Southeast Asian countries have also caught wind. The proliferation of elderly foreign men marrying much younger local women has been a prevalent problem in Burma, China, the Philippines, and Vietnam—all countries with Hmong populations. But while human trafficking is a problem in each of those countries, where thousands of foreign men may have settled into genuine relationships, none have implemented outright bans on cross-cultural marriages.  “We need to focus on the core values of what a marriage is,” a spokesperson from the U.S. Cambodian Embassy. “We need to focus on tradition and family. If this continues, who will it benefit? Definitely not the respective nations each person hails from.”

By Elizabeth Thao
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Sources: U.S. Cambodian Embassy, U.S. Lao Embassy, Asia Times, SuabHmong, Coalition Against Trafficking Women