Tag: Prostitution

Former Prostitutes Outside Camp Humphreys Face Eviction

| September 8, 2014

Compared to the comfort women the women who used to work as prostitutes outside of US military bases definitely do not receive the same level of social support:

More than 70 aging women live in a squalid neighborhood between the rear gate of the U.S. Army garrison here and half a dozen seedy nightclubs. Near the front gate, glossy illustrations posted in real-estate offices show the dream homes that may one day replace their one-room shacks.

They once worked as prostitutes for American soldiers in this “camptown” near Camp Humphreys, and they’ve stayed because they have nowhere else to go. Now, the women are being forced out of the Anjeong-ri neighborhood by developers and landlords eager to build on prime real estate around the soon-to-be-expanded garrison.

“My landlord wants me to leave, but my legs hurt, I can’t walk, and South Korean real estate is too expensive,” says Cho Myung-ja, 75, a former prostitute who receives monthly court eviction notices at her home, which she has rarely left over the last five years because of leg pain.

“I feel like I’m suffocating,” she says.

Plagued by disease, poverty and stigma, the women have little to no support from the public or the government.

Their fate contrasts greatly with a group of Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II. Those so-called “comfort women” receive government assistance under a special law, and large crowds demanding that Japan compensate and apologize to the women attend weekly rallies outside the Japanese Embassy.

While the camptown women get social welfare, there’s no similar law for special funds to help them, according to two Pyeongtaek city officials who refused to be named because of office rules. Many people in South Korea don’t even know about the camptown women.  [Star & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but what few people realize is that many of these former prostitutes were sold to pimps by their families and forced to become prostitutes.  Other were abandoned children or orphans that were taken in by the pimps to become prostitutes.  Could it be that the same thing was going on in regards to the World War II comfort women and thus the collective amnesia in regards to the former camptown prostitutes?

CNN Report Criticizes US Military’s Patronizing of Juicy Bars In Korea

| December 27, 2013

Via a reader tip comes this CNN video about the alleged sexual slavery of ‘juicy girls’ in Korea:

Anyone who has spent time in Korea knows that this video report does not describe the whole issue with the juicy girls in Korea.  I am not going to speak to whether or not the woman in the video knew what she was getting herself into, but I am willing to bet the vast majority of the girls in the Philippines do know what they were getting themselves into coming to Korea.  Just Google “Philippines hostess Korea” and a number of articles about juicy girls comes up.  Additionally CNN made no mention of the fact that most of these girls go to work in Korean bars.  This is hardly just a US military issue that CNN chose to focus on.  Heck trafficking Filipinas is not even just a Korea issue.  So why did CNN focus on just the US military?  Could it be because just as I suspected they would the special interests using the juicy girls to push the military sexual assault issue?  That is why I believe USFK officials have been especially proactive about trying to change the juicy bar system this year.  However, I continue to maintain that USFK should just put clubs that hire third country nationals off limits which would largely end the criticism.

Military Confirms That Ville Outside Osan AB Is Now Off Limits To Military Personnel

| June 14, 2013

The rumor that was first reported here on the ROK Drop yesterday has now been confirmed:

The Songtan Entertainment District outside Osan Air Base has been declared off-limits for 18 hours every day starting Friday because of planned protests by area club owners over the decision to prohibit servicemembers from frequenting a half-dozen bars found to be promoting prostitution.

The entertainment district is to be off-limits from 11 a.m. to 5 a.m.

“This action is necessary to ensure the safety and welfare of military and civilian personnel and family members, and to avert incidents and provocations detrimental to the alliance between the United States and Republic of Korea,” said a statement posted on Facebook and attributed to the installation command.

Songtan is home to dozens of so-called “juicy bars” where primarily Philippine women are employed as hostesses, flirting with servicemembers and trying to get them to buy them expensive juice drinks.

While flirting is as far as things go at some juicy bars, others are notorious for forcing their hostesses to prostitute themselves when they fall short of drink-sale quotas.

A spokeswoman for the 51st Fighter Wing command said the bar owners’ association has said that between 50 and 150 supporters will protest for as many as 30 days.

“To ensure the safety and welfare of our service members, the Songtan Entertainment District will be temporarily placed off-limits for the duration of the protests,” said a release from the command.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but the S&S had to of course once again make the claim that the juicy girls are forced to prostitute themselves.  This may have been true over a decade ago, but now the vast majority of the juicy girls know exactly what they are getting into when they come to Korea.  With that said what is happening may be a reaction to the fact that the special interests have been looking to go after the US military bases overseas for promoting human trafficking. Remember what Anu Baghwati from SWAN said recently:

At bases overseas, there’s commercial exploitation of women thriving around them, women being trafficked,” she said. “You can’t expect to treat women as one of your own when, in same breath, you as a young soldier are being encouraged to exploit women on the outside of that base.”

Now that they have lost the sexual assault fight the special interests need to do something else in the meantime to go after the military and whats better than to demagogue the juicy girl issue?  So the Osan AB leadership may be trying to get these clubs to clean up their act.  The rumor mill though has been suggesting that these guys were supposedly brought on base and interrogated in way the bar owners thought was inappropriate.  Then you add in last year’s Osan Handcuff Incident as well as past incidents such as the Osan Shakedown Scandal and guess things have finally boiled over.

A ROK Head was kind enough to send me pictures of the various banners that the business owners have strung up around the Songtan ville in response to what they believe is the heavy handedness of the Osan AB leadership:

Just to show that this type of thing is not limited to Osan, a couple of years ago business owners in Pyeongtaek were making the same complaints about the leadership “tyranny” at Camp Humphreys.  Even before that I can remember when they hung a banner outside Camp Humphreys saying “Commander Michael J. Taliento Jr., You go back to Afghanistan again”.  Colonel Taliento who was the post commander at the time cracked down on the human trafficking and underage drinking going on outside the post at the time which caused much anger with the locals back then.  So what is going on now is nothing new and it is going to be interesting to see which side wins out on this issue.

Do Juicy Girls Really Know What They Are Getting Themselves Into?

| February 28, 2012

Via a reader tip in the Open Thread comes this latest prostitution article in the Korea Times.  It seems like every couple of years some Korean reporter recycles the same prostitution and human trafficking angle to bash USFK with:

When Klarys (an alias), a 27-year-old from the Philippines, applied to come to Korea on an entertainment visa, she envisioned herself doing what she always wanted ― singing onstage.

But she says the E-6 visa was taken by her Korean promoter upon arrival and that the vision rapidly began to slip away. And very quickly, she says, so did control over her life.

The club she was taken to outside a U.S. military installation had little to do with music. Rather, she said it was a gateway to a seedy industry of entertaining soldiers ― a world where activists claim sex trafficking is not uncommon.

“For me, it was an opportunity to go abroad,” Klarys told The Korea Times. “But I got here and I was dancing on a pole. We were forced to go out (and have sex with) with whoever. You can’t say no.”  [Korea Times]

Considering how long women from the Philippines have been coming to Korea she likely knew full well she was going to be working in a sleazy bar.  As far as prostitution she can say no but the way the club system is set up she will likely make no money if she can’t sell the drinks:

She estimated that thousands of them now work in “juicy bars” outside the bases, saying soldiers ― despite the military’s “zero-tolerance policy” toward prostitution ― buy glasses of juice in order to spend time, flirt and dance with the women. Those women who fail to meet a quota for juice sales are often subject to “bar fines,” meaning they are told to sell their body to account for the shortfall, she said.

I usually say read the rest at the link but don’t bother because it is more of the same of juicy girls saying they were virgins before coming to Korea and expecting to sing and dance and not be involved in prostitution which then forced them to get hooked on drugs.  If you can believe it they make a claim that is all the girls from the Philippines that go to Japan, sing and dance and are not involved in prostitution.  So the article is the typical media BS to bash USFK with when the solution to human trafficking is quite simple, get the ROK government to stop issuing the entertainer visas to women in the Philippines.  But wait that would also dry up the far larger supply of Filippinas sent to work in Korean brothels, which the article makes no mention of.

I continue to maintain that the best way to handle the issue of human trafficking is to put clubs that hire third country nationals off limits.  Most of the Filipina’s working in these clubs know what they are getting into and human trafficking in general has been greatly reduced in Korea in recent years.  However, as long Filipinas are working in juicy bars there will continue to the perception of human trafficking that will follow USFK that the media will continue to jump on.  By forcing the bars to employ Korean workers it would pretty much make the human trafficking issue go away because Korean nationals would be much harder to traffic in.  The people that will lose if bars with 3rd country nationals are put off limits are the bar owners that will make less money because they will have to pay Korean women more money for doing the same thing these Filipina women are doing.