Seoul: A South Korean man with a history of schizophrenia was sentenced to 12 years in prison for stabbing his Vietnamese wife to death in a case that prompted promises of better monitoring of the country's international matchmaking business.
The Busan District Court handed down the sentence to the 47-year-old for killing Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc, 20, in July, Yonhap news agency reported Friday.
The court also mandated treatment and placed him under supervision, including 10 years of electronic tracking, Yonhap said.
According to Yonhap, the court said, "The defendant got married without revealing his mental illness. He was aware that he could not remain mentally stable without medication, but he stopped taking it before and after the wedding, which led to the crime."
Calls to the court seeking confirmation went unanswered on Saturday.
Ngoc, who left her home in southwestern Vietnam to help earn money for her family, met her husband through a South Korean matchmaking agency, married him in Vietnam in February and then flew with him to South Korea in July.
The husband, who has history of mental illness, confessed that "voices" ordered him to kill his young bride, police in the southeastern city of Busan said in July. The husband was only identified by his surname, Jang.
Ngoc's death has prompted South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to promise that the government would take action to better support multicultural families and to monitor and regulate international matchmaking agencies.
Over the past decade, a growing number of South Korean men, particularly from farming villages with dwindling populations, have been looking overseas for wives, according to the Women Migrants Human Rights Center in Seoul.
In 2009, 180,000 foreigners were married to South Koreans, including more than 35,000 Vietnamese women, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security has said.
