Working days as a food vendor, she went on blind dates with 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 non-romantic 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, full-figured 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," she says. "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 the men's parents were displaced from the North during the Korean War, and they relate more to the culture there.
North Korean women also are 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 plenty about North Korean men -- she used to be married to one, but she left the marriage when she and her daughter defected in 2002.
Her list of eligible candidates numbers about 100 South Korean men and 370 North Korean women. Her services are free to women from the North, a gesture Choi makes out of camaraderie.
Men pay roughly $1,900 a year for a guaranteed six dates.
But not all North-South unions are made in heaven.
One woman said she needed money to bring her brother across the border. When her date gave her the cash, she vanished.
But Choi, a believer in marriage, says the risks are worth it. "Nothing is more important for us than marriage to settle down in South Korea," she says. "It is a turning point to start a new life."
Yet even with all her success, Choi isn't sure she wants to restart the search for her own mate.
"My friends tell me, 'Hey, you go find someone for yourself first. Stop hooking up others,' " Choi says. "But as I say to my staff, I probably shouldn't go out with clients.
"There is a saying that the monk cannot shave his own head."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tc-nw-south-korea-0510may10,0,3303465.story
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