Over at Korea Expose they have an article posted about the growing problem of South Korean men fathering children in the Philippines and leaving the mothers by going back to Korea:
Kristi, 23, met a South Korean man in the city of Makati, Philippines, through a blind date. “It was love at first sight. We were dating for a few months. Soon enough, I found out he was already married with kids. It broke my world so I decided to end it there.”
But things didn’t work out for Kristi: Shortly after their break-up, she realized she was pregnant. “He told me ‘Don’t worry I’m here for you, I won’t leave you,’ but one month before giving birth, he just disappeared.”
It’s a recurring theme: South Korean men go to the Philippines, have relationships of varying degrees of commitment with local women, father children, and then at one point or another flee back to South Korea severing all ties and leaving the mothers alone with the children.
Kristi is one of many thousands of Filipino women who are left to rear their children alone because of absent South Korean fathers. A number often floated around by organizations and media is 30,000, but there has yet to be a clear count or study on the issue.
Kopino — a portmanteau of Korean and Filipino — is a term said to have first been createdin 2004 to refer to a child born to a Filipino mother and a South Korean father — who has often run away.
Kopino children face a number of difficulties in terms of child support, acquisition of nationality and visa issuance. In many cases, the mother — often from a poor background — has no contact with the father, and no knowledge of her former partner’s private details, be it a South Korean phone number, an address, let alone a Korean name. This leaves her to pay all child rearing expenses, even though the South Korean father has a legal obligation to provide support according to South Korea laws. [Korea Expose]
You can read the rest at the link, but I would not be surprised if this is more than just a Korean problem in the Philippines considering its reputation for sex tourism.
