Illegal marriage brokers trouble Vietnam

Clamping down on illegal marriage brokers who send Vietnamese brides overseas would be difficult, a Vietnamese official said Thursday.

The issue "has been considered very seriously by the authorities in Vietnam, but I think that it is not easy to identify which marriage is unlawfully brokered," said Nguyen Phuong Nga, spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A 20-year-old Vietnamese woman was killed by her 47-year-old South Korean husband earlier this month, eight days after she arrived there.

The man turned himself in and told police he had heard a "ghost's voice" urging him to kill the bride when they fought. He had been treated 57 times for schizophrenia since July 2005, police said.

The couple met through a marriage agency, the VietnamNet online news service reported. About 90 percent of the weddings between South Koreans and Vietnamese are arranged by marriage brokers, which are illegal in Vietnam.

South Korea's justice ministry announced a raft of measures to curb abuse of foreign brides after the murder.

AFP