At a recent conference in Hanoi, the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs and the Vietnam Women’s Union released figures showing that 100,000 Vietnamese women marry foreigners annually.

The November 19 conference, “Vietnamese women in foreign countries,” the first to take place in Vietnam, was attended by around 200 Vietnamese women who had returned home from overseas, presumably after moving there for marriage.

Unsurprisingly, most of these marriages are conducted through match-makers, according to Dang The Hung, deputy chairman of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs. Love has little to do with them:

“Many of those with foreign husbands have low educational levels, so they usually have to depend on their husband and some of them have been mistreated by their husbands or their husbands’ families.”

“Besides, many marriages were conducted like “commercial exchanges” between foreigners and poor women who wanted to marry foreigners for financial purposes.”

Hung added that from 2008 – 2010, 300,000 Vietnamese women married foreigners and that number has increased year over year.

Given that, we wonder where the number stands today.

[Tuoi Tre // Photo via M.G. Kafkas]