Inside Marriage Brokerage

This chapter examines Korea’s cross-border marriage brokerage industry, focusing on how brokers navigate regulatory pressures, market competition, and organisational constraints. Based on 13 selected cases, it explores how both large and small agencies differ in decision-making, institutional alignment, and strategic positioning. By introducing a typology of broker-produced advertisements, this chapter illustrates how content is tailored to stages of the matchmaking process. It argues that brokers do more than mediate transactions; they navigate between institutional logics and individual agency, shaping conditions under which narratives of gender, morality, and cultural difference emerge. In doing so, they present themselves as trustworthy actors within a contested moral and regulatory field.