SEOUL — As a North Korean defector on the hunt for a husband in Seoul, Choi Young-hee was unlucky in love.
Working days as a food vendor, she went on blind dates with a lot of frogs -- men more wily and Westernized than their conservative northern counterparts, perfectionists who often boorishly asked if she could set them up with her North Korean girlfriends.
So in 2005, a deflated Choi began playing professional matchmaker, and soon found she was a better bridesmaid than a bride.
Four years later, she has brought together 360 couples, in her own small way accomplishing what all the highfalutin diplomacy could not: uniting a hopelessly divided Korean peninsula through cross-cultural marriages.
Forget about all the nonromantic static coming out of North Korea, this self-proclaimed Cupid from Pyongyang means business.
Her company, South Korean Man-North Korean Woman Marriage Consulting, is a play off a proverb that says South Korea is home to good-looking men and North Korea the domain of ravishingly beautiful women.
Choi, an energetic 43-year-old, handicaps eligible men and women like a racetrack veteran.
South Korean men are charmers, full of sweet talk, she says. But some overdo the cheesy compliments. Yet even at their worst, she says, they make better mates than North Korean men.
"North Koreans are hard men of few words. They don't have as much consideration for a woman."
Some South Korean men have decided they want North Korean wives, who favor more traditional values. In many cases, their parents were displaced from the North during the Korean War, and they relate more to the culture there.
North Korean women are also seen as exotic yet still Korean.
"Many men don't want an international marriage," Choi says. "And then the idea of marrying a North Korean strikes them."
More than half the nearly 15,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea are women, according to government statistics. In 2007, South Korea revised a law to enable North Korean defectors to divorce the spouses they left behind.
Choi knows a lot about North Korean men -- she used to be married to one, but she left the marriage when she and her daughter defected in 2002.
Back then, Choi was girlishly slim, as evidenced by a photo she keeps in her matchmaking office. The years may have added a bit of weight, but in contrast to the image of North Koreans as drab and gray, Choi is full of color, a woman who laughs easily.
