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]
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