Introduction

This introduction examines cross-border marriage brokers’ role not only as facilitators of cross-border unions but also as strategic actors whose practices reproduce, mediate, and selectively reinterpret dominant ideas about gender, family, and nationhood. Situating Korea’s cross-border marriage industry within its broader socio-political and regulatory context, this chapter introduces the conceptual framework of brokering nationhood and wifehood . This framework extends the migration infrastructure approach by foregrounding brokers’ discursive power and their embeddedness in regulatory, market, and civil society structures. Drawing on YouTube media analysis, interviews with brokers, non-governmental organisation (NGO) fieldwork, and government documents, the study traces how brokers manage commercial imperatives within a tightly regulated migration regime. It asks how they navigate legal constraints and public scrutiny, reframe their legitimacy, and participate in the contested construction of national identity and gender norms, often reinforcing dominant ideals while marginalising those who do not conform. At its core, this book explores how these narratives are interpreted, resisted, and reshaped by the state, civil society, migrant women, and Korean men, revealing deeper tensions around race, gender, and belonging in contemporary Korea.