Category: Prostitution

A woman representing a nationwide association of brothel owners, known as Hanteo, sobs at the Constitutional Court in Seoul on March 31, 2016, after the court declared the law punishing voluntary prostitution constitutional. (Yonhap)

It appears the language barrier is what initially led to the misunderstanding at LAX of a K-Pop group being mistakenly investigated as prostitutes.  If anything their promotion company should be happy about this arrest because of all the media attention the no name group has now received:

Newbie K-pop girl group Oh My Girl returned to Incheon International Airport on Friday morning after being held for 15 hours at Los Angeles International Airport. WM Entertainment, the eight-member girl group’s agency, said the girl group was held at the U.S. airport because they were mistaken for prostitutes.

“We have appointed a lawyer in the states because we need a valid explanation for the unfair detainment,” a person working for WM Entertainment said.   WM added that Oh My Girl left for Los Angeles on Wednesday for photo shoot.

“A person working at immigration asked about the relationship between the girl group members and staff, and one of the staff members said ‘sister,’” a person working at WM told multiple local news agencies. “And the customs office thought it was weird because the girl group and staff members are not related by blood. The customs office also paid attention to a lot of props and clothes.”

Staff members reportedly tried to explain that they were visiting Los Angeles as singers, but they could not correct the misunderstanding at immigration, and the group and staff members’ smartphones were confiscated.
In the end, the girl group could not enter the United States and returned to Korea.
Oh My Girl released their first debut single in April, but the K-pop act is still largely unknown in the music scene.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

This really should not come as much of a surprise since the vast majority of North Korean defectors are women and when they arrive in the South they have few job skills to make a living with.  Turning towards prostitution to make ends meet is something that women with financial issues have done for centuries.  Additionally many of these North Korean women had to turn to prostitution while refugees in China in order to make money to get to South Korea in the first place:

A considerable number of female defectors from North Korea have become sex workers here after experiencing difficulties adjusting to life in the South, according to media reports.

KBS, a state-run broadcaster, aired a program on Sunday night about the plight of some 40 to 50 female defectors who work at “ticket dabangs,” coffee shops that illegally sell sex, in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Some of these places are owned by North Korean defectors.

The women are usually in their late 30s to mid 40s. The clients, mostly in their 50s to 70s, are not only residents of Hwaseong, but travel to the town from other regions.

The women spend time with clients in karaoke and go to motel rooms with them as well as delivering coffee, which is the ostensible business activity.

A female defector told the program that each client pays 25,000 won ($22) per hour for singing together in karaoke rooms. Another woman asked for a more than 100,000 won to provide sexual services when a member of the production crew disguised as a client contacted her.

It was already known that ticket dabangs recruiting female North Korean defectors are also prevalent in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.

The women said that they used to work at normal companies or work as waitresses in restaurants after they defected, but their monthly salaries of some 1.3 to 1.7 million won was not enough to maintain their livelihood and support their family members left behind in the North. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

The real question is how long has this been going on with everyone turning a blind eye to it?  Additionally is this just a one time raid and then everything goes back to what it was or are the authorities serious about stopping b this:

China’s CCTV on Monday broadcast an expose on casinos on Jeju Island that attract Chinese gamblers through prostitution.

The broadcaster said 80 percent of gamblers on Jeju are Chinese, often lured with the promise of free tour programs and prostitutes.

One casino contract shown in the CCTV program promised clients purchasing W100,000 worth of chips a free special massage, while around W36 million worth of chips leads to an opportunity to sleep with an aspiring Korean actress or model, and buying W90 million worth of chips two nights with the woman (US$1=W1,150).

Some Korean casino offices in China were raided by police. CCTV said 13 Koreans and 34 Chinese recruiters were arrested in June for illegally luring gamblers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hebei and Jiangsu.   [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The Stars & Stripes has an article published that details how some elderly women in South Korea turn to prostitution to supplement their incomes due to the lack of a robust Social Security like pension system:

As about a dozen elderly men loiter in a small plaza near a cinema, mostly chatting or watching people pass by, several deeply wrinkled women stroll among them, trolling for customers willing to pay for sex in nearby motels.

“Hey, do you want to go with me? I can treat you really well,” a 76-year-old woman with a limp says as a reporter approaches her on a recent sunny afternoon.

Despite a police crackdown this spring that resulted in 33 arrests, including an 84-year-old woman, the so-called “Bacchus ladies” can still be seen near the Piccadilly theater in Seoul’s Jongno neighborhood. The nickname comes from the popular energy drink that many of the prostitutes have traditionally sold.

The middle-aged and elderly women and their customers — both pitied and scorned in this conservative country — provide a look at the dark side of South Korea’s rapid economic rise and erosion of traditional parent-child roles. As a growing, ultra-competitive middle class has become preoccupied with getting ahead, many elderly and poor people have been left to fend for themselves.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

The author of this article that describes what it is like to go to a Korean room salon makes a good point that religious right in Korea likes to condemn homosexuality as being immoral, but turn a blind eye to all the immoral activity going on in room salons across the country every day.

Via the Korea Herald.

Is banning prostitution denying someone their human rights?  That is what sex workers are saying:

The debate on legalizing prostitution has heated up in South Korea as the Constitutional Court began reviewing the law that criminalizes the sex trade. The court held its first public hearing Thursday.

The antiprostitution law was enacted in 2004 to protect human rights, partly prompted by fire that killed 14 sex workers who were locked in a brothel in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, in 2002.

The law stipulates that both purchasing and selling of sex carry a penalty of up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 3 million won ($2,747). It gives exemption to people forced into prostitution, leaving only voluntary sex workers ― many of whom oppose the law ― subject to the punishment.

A 41-year-old woman accused of selling sex for 130,000 won filed for a constitutional review of the law in 2012. The woman argued that punishing voluntary prostitution, especially when the sex worker has no other means of income, was a violation of fundamental human rights.

“Are we (sex workers) doing something that is worse than stealing? Is what we do worse than murder?” the woman said back in 2012.

Her request for a review was granted by the Seoul Northern District Court and eventually by the Constitutional Court.

Police crackdowns on brothels have also had damaging outcomes in recent years. Last year, a prostitute in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, jumped from a motel during a raid and died. A police officer had reportedly approached her while pretending to be a client.

Those who are against the antiprostitution law claim there is little evidence that punishing sex workers is effective in curbing the sex trade. According to government data, the number of female sex workers increased by 3.8 percent from 2010 to 2013, in spite of the law.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link, but I have to wonder if the foreigner in the picture knows that depending on his visa status he cannot participate in political activity in Korea?

If these former prostitutes win this lawsuit it seems this would open up the flood gates for lawsuits against the government for all prostitutes that every worked in Korea since the government turned a blind eye to this activity for so long:

Attorneys for a group of former prostitutes who serviced U.S. troops decades ago argued Friday they should receive compensation because the South Korean government encouraged them to “work for their country.”

The 122 women are suing the government for $1.2 million and asking for an official apology and an investigation into a system of open prostitution that operated in the military camp towns surrounding U.S. bases for several decades after the Korean War. The women claim their human rights were violated. Their attorneys say documents show the national government, including a ministry overseeing health and social affairs, was directing local health centers to manage the women’s health care.

“The plaintiffs were not aware at the time that prostitution was illegal,” Ui Eun-jin, one of several attorneys for the women, said during the first hearing in the case. “They were being educated that this was work for their country and an act of patriotism.”

Ha Ju-hee, another attorney for the women, said the national government had designated specific areas for the women to practice prostitution, forced them to register with health clinics, get regular health checkups and then treatment if they were found to have sexually transmitted diseases.

“The state caused the plaintiffs pain, so the state has a duty to compensate them,” she said, adding that the national government also praised the women for earning U.S. dollars. South Korea was desperately poor after the Korean War, and American currency was seen as a way to build up its struggling economy.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the club system many of these women found themselves locked into all those years ago has been well documented in books such as this one.  Here is an example of the boards that were put up warning GIs back then of girls with STDs:

So it was pretty clear that the Korean government in cooperation with the US military back then regulated the prostitution industry outside of the US military bases.  With that said the prostitutes in the camptowns are just a tiny fraction of the total number of prostitutes in Korea over the years that the government also turned a blind eye to.  What is especially reprehensible about this is that many of these women were sold into the club system by their parents who were looking for money to support their families during Korea’s era of poverty before today’s economic miracle.  There is a lot of blame to go around in regards to all the prostitution in Korea, not just outside the US military bases.

I wonder if this brothel owner was not making the appropriate bribes to get raided like this:

“Put your clothes on,” shouted a police officer as he entered a small room during an evening raid on a massage parlor set up as a front to conceal a brothel in Gangnam, southern Seoul.

A man and a woman lying down on a single bed tried hastily to cover their naked bodies with a large bath towel.

The man turned his face away from the officer, while the woman bowed her head.

Four other officers entered another seven rooms connected by a network of underground corridors.
Five government human rights officers and a reporter from The Korea Times accompanied the raid conducted by officers from Gangnam Police Station on Nov. 18.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer began reading the couple their rights.

The brothel was located in a nondescript, three-story building located in Nonhyeon-dong.

A neon sign was on one corner of the building but it did not specify any of the services available or the activities conducted inside. Outside a man was standing guard with a walkie-talkie in his hand.

When the policemen told him to move aside, he offered little resistance.
A door was then flung open and the policemen ran downstairs.

They reached a lounge where a hidden corridor was discovered after an air conditioner was removed.

The operation was made possible by two undercover officers inside the building who posed as customers and text-messaged reports to colleagues waiting outside.

Although the remaining seven rooms were also occupied, officers struggled to break the locks on the doors. By the time they gained entry, men and women inside the rooms were fully clothed and officers were unable to find physical evidence such as used condoms in the room and had to let them go.

“We just had a chat,” said one man, who was accompanied by a woman.
“I was unlucky,” said the man who was caught in bed with a woman, as he was escorted into an unmarked police van.

Also taken into custody was a blind man who managed the premises, but officers said he was just a front man and not the real owner.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.