More mixed babies in S.Korea

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_460760.html

YEONGGWANG (SOUTH KOREA): Just a few years ago, the number of pregnant women in this city had declined so much that the sparsely equipped two-room maternity ward at Yeonggwang General Hospital was close to shutting down.

But these days, it is busy again.

What is more surprising than the miniature baby boom is its composition: children of Korean fathers and mothers from China, Vietnam and other parts of Asia.

These families have suddenly become so numerous that the nurses say they have had to learn how to say 'push' in four languages.

It is a similar story across South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of foreign women have come as immigrants in recent years, often through marriages arranged by brokers.

They have been making up for a shortage of eligible Korean women, particularly in under-developed rural areas like this one in the nation's south-west.

These unions are bearing large numbers of children of mixed parentage, confronting this proudly homogeneous nation with the challenge of smoothly assimilating them. These children are widely known pejoratively as Kosians, a compound of Korean and Asian.

NEW YORK TIMES