Your father bought me for 8000 yuan

Abstract

I wondered how many other North Korean girls were bought by Chinese men in this same parking lot, along this same reproductive labor corridor, its spiny tendrils burrowing into villages in Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Shandong provinces. Maybe your nainai mentioned you were born of an “unconventional marriage.” But our type of marriage was quite common. No one explained to me why, but eventually I found out: In the 1970s, Korean women fled farms for cities, leaving South Korea's rural men stranded. South Korea's solution was to import Joseonjok women from China. Busloads of rural Korean bachelors shopped for Joseonjok brides from matchmakers who peddled girls like produce at market. By the time I crossed the Tumen, those Chinese provinces had their own crisis. The men who had lost their women to rural Koreans needed wives of their own. And like a pathetic answer to prayers, we appeared.