Prostitution in South Korea

Prostitution in South Korea is an illegal industry. Despite this, a report issued by the Korean Institute of Criminology in 2003 indicated that 20% of men in their 20s pay for sex at least four times a month, 358,000 visiting prostitutes daily. According to The Korea Women's development Institute, the sex trade in Korea was estimated to amount to 14 trillion won ($13 billion) in 2007, roughly 1.6 percent of the nation's gross domestic product whereas The Ministry of Gender and Family Equality estimates that it is around 4% of South Korea's GDP, with revenue exceeding $22 billion making it the country's fifth-largest industry and comparable to that of the agricultural and marine sectors. The sex trade was said to involve some 94 million transactions in 2007, down from 170 million in 2002. The amount of money traded for prostitution was over 14 trillion won in 2002.

In 2003 the Korean Institute of Criminology announced that 330,000 Korean women (1 out of every 25 over 20 years of age), were involved in prostitution (maech'un). In 2004, estimating that around 500,000 women were actively involved in the sex industry, the Korean government stopped keeping figures. The Korean Feminist Association alleges that there are at least 800,000 and Whasoon Byun and Jungim Hwang estimated around 1.5 millions were engaged, one fifth of the population aged between 15 to 29.

Historical perspective

Male and female Prostitution has been a component of Korean culture for literally thousands of years but according to Hyung-Ki Choi, Deputy Director, Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center in Seoul and Huso Yi in the Complete International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, "Korean women have been treated as second-class citizens regardless of their social and familial positions" and subjects of discrimination throughout Korean history. Because of the segregated roles of male and females within the Confucian society, women as professionals have been limited to performing particular public functions as shamans, folk healers and 'entertainers of men' called kisaeng or sadangp'ae acting as prostitutes.

Almost without exception, these women were from lower and slave class families and social outcasts. Along with various arts, they also practised prostitution. and were later to became the foundation of male prostitution fantasies. According to Confucianism, woman is always placed lower than man. The purity of family lineage, female virginity and sexual fidelity were and still are stressed, whereas men were and still are permitted access to prostitution and other forms of sexual explorations.

Korea culture has been very phallic oriented. Considered as sexually superior to females, sexual intercourse was not classically perceived as a mutual relationship but rather as a primitive release for the male. Korean sexual culture was created to satisfy strong and aggressive male sexual needs and was one in which women played a passive role. Hyung-Ki and Huso state that this concept entered into everyday sexual and marital relationships seriously distorting natural, intimate relationships between men and women due to sexual discrimination.

Noted American Presbyterian missionary and physician Dr Horace Allen, arriving two years after Korea was opened to the Western nations 1884 and instrumental in the lifting of the nation's anti-Christianity policy, documented in detail the existence, nature and problems of Korean prostitution in his papers and the existence of syphilis and gonorrhea spread by female performers, usually slaves, and the existence of male prostitutes.

Another early Presbyterian missionary of forty years experience, Archibald Campbell wrote, “In Korea. . . there was spiritual darkness until the gospel of Christ was brought in. Men sold their daughters, their sisters, and sometimes their wives into prostitution without a qualm of conscience."

During Korea's colonialization by Japan, Korean women started entering Japan brothels soon after the 1905 Protectorate Treaty. Registration and the collection of taxes from them were used as policies to root prostitution and the spread of syphilis.

US and UN Military Camptowns

After the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, prostitution flourished in the following decades especially providing sexual services for American military forces called "camptowns". They reached their maximum amount during the 1960s and helped bring in foreign currency to rebuild the Korean economy. 37,000 American troops remained in South Korea in 1953 and at each of the 99 bases were camptown brothels filled with over 27,000 women. In 40 years, over one million women worked in the military sex industry. Many were tricked into becoming prostitutes. U.S. military presence in Korean played a major role in expanding its prostitution industry.

According to Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley College, "Camptown prostitution and related businesses on the Korean Peninsula contributed to nearly 25 percent of the Korean GNP. The Korean government supported the camptown brothels, hoping the industry would boost regional economies. Joong Ang Daily reported the claims of one such sex worker, Cheon Chang-suk, and reported that, "recent studies by scholars and nongovernmental agencies have suggested that the Korean government helped build and maintain the brothels after the Korean War".

In the same article, Professor Lee Na-young from Chung-Ang University found the Korean government "regularly ran medical checkups, and set up programs to regulate sexually transmitted diseases at the camptown brothels" forcibly isolated and locking up in jails infected women. The women were are forcibly checked every two weeks for venereal disease, and regularly for H.I.V. The professor noted that the Korean government changed the local Tourism Promotion Act in 1961 to register camptowns as "special tourist businesses”, granting them free tax benefits and implied that the Korean government benefited from profits made through military prostitutes.

In some camptowns, women were kidnapped by criminal gangs and coercive procurement such as fraudulent promises of well-paid employment and skills-training were used. Rape was used as an initiation to sexual labor and debt slavery was used to hold women. The kijich'on system was heavily regulated and sustained by US Military and Korean government, licensed by the Korea Special Tourist Association. The Korean government also colluded with the Korean police to run both “comfort stations” for U.N. soldiers and its own military's comfort system” during the Korean War. 78 in Busan. Non-registered brothels numbered several times.

Its army operated its own “military comfort system” during and after the Korean War , its regulation was not only due to concerns for soldiers’ health. It was to defend national security during the war against communism and as a “counter espionage policy”. However, the Korean government also ran a brothel targetting high-ranking U.S. military to “pilfer U.S. military secrets” called the “Nangnang Club”. A "National Female Youth March" in 1953 (T’aehanysachngnnan ch’ongkwlgidaehoe) protested about the existence of 100,000 prostitutes and their effect on to Korean society.

Camptown prostitution enabled South Korean to earn foreign currency without any start-up capital. In 1964, catering exclusively to American soldiers, they earned almost $10 million, when total exports were approximately $100 million. Just as the women in camptowns were congratulated as “personal ambassadors” and “patriots” earning dollars for the nation’s sake

Post-Korean War

In the 1970s, tourism, including sex tourism in South Korea, generated a significant proportion of Korea’s total foreign exchange income. Its government mobilized women as “raw materials for national economic growth". In 1971, the Tourism Promotion Law was revised and 119 "special districts" were revived.

Japanese sex tourism in Korea was popular based around Kisaeng parties which resulted in protests from Christians and feminists. In the 1980s and early 90s, Korea was one of the most popular destinations for sex tourism. Fake barber's shops, steambaths and noraebangs (karaoke room) provided prostitutes at a cheap price. In the 1980s, Korean women's groups publicized the conditions of kijich'on women (Korean military prostitutes at the US camps) as victims of debt and objects of foreign domination. In her paper, Professor Katherine Moon states that the experience and suffering of the kijich'on in Korean society was identical to the earlier chongsindae or comfort women. Many were forced to work as prostitutes to support impoverished families or the university fees of their siblings.

Dr Hei-Soo Shin, a leader of the Chongsindae Movement, noted in 1991 that "Korea's economic miracle developed in tandem with and partly owing to the sex industry in which Korean business and government encouraged male employees to indulge." At that time, 1.2 million women were estimated to be involved in providing sexual services of various forms.

Human trafficking

See also: Human rights in South Korea

South Korea is both a source and destination country for human trafficking. Females from countries of the former Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries , including minors are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and sex slavery within South Korea Brought into the country for prostitution by Korean organized crime, many of are tricked into thinking they will have a legitimate job. . Female migrant workers recruited by Korean employment agencies come to the country to work in factories only later to deceived and forced into prostitution. as the Korea Special Tourism Association (an association camptown owners near U.S. military bases)

Though as recently as 2001 the South Korean government was accused of not meeting the "minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, under the terms of the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act". Human trafficking was outlawed and penalties for prostitution increased; the 2004 Act on the Prevention of the Sex Trade and Protection of its Victims was passed, toughening penalties for traffickers, ending deportation of victims, and establishing a number of shelters for victims. As of 2005 there were 144 people serving jail time for human trafficking. These Korean women and new forms of prostitution also get exported to the US.

A US Immigration official conceded in 2006 that "There's a highly organized logistical network between Korea and the United States with recruiters, brokers, intermediaries, taxi drivers and madams". Korean women are alleged to be paying as much as $16,000 to be smuggled into the USA to work in brothels.

In New York and Virginia of the United States, many Korean women were arrested for prostitution. Los Angeles Police Department said that Since 2006, 90% of prostitutes arrested every month in Los Angeles are Koreans.

The US State Department 2008 report titled, "Trafficking in person's report: June 2008," states that in "March 2008, a joint operation between the AFP and DIAC broke up a syndicate in Sydney that allegedly trafficked South Korean women to a legal brothel and was earning more than $2.3 million a year. Police allege the syndicate recruited Korean women through deception about the conditions under which they would be employed, organized their entry into Australia under false pretenses, confiscated their travel documents, and forced them to work up to 20 hours a day in a legal Sydney brothel owned by the syndicate."

The report also states that "the South Korean government fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. Over the last year, the government continued law enforcement efforts against sex trafficking, and signed MOUs for the Employment Placement System (EPS) with five additional countries and conducted numerous anti-trafficking awareness campaigns. The Korean National Police Agency cooperated with foreign law enforcement agencies to crack down on human smuggling networks that have been known to traffic women for sexual exploitation.

These efforts with respect for sex trafficking have not been matched by investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of labor trafficking occurring within South Korea’s large foreign labor force. Efforts to reduce demand for child sex tourism, in light of the scale of the problem, would be enhanced by law enforcement efforts to investigate Korean nationals who sexually exploit children abroad. South Korean men continue to be a significant source of demand for child sex tourism in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands."

In August 2002, US based Navy Times reported Senior Superintendent Kim Kang-ja, director of the Women and Juvenile Division of the Korean National Police Agency, state that all South Korean police and other officials concerned with prostitution were engaged in bribery and receiving sexual favors including group sex with minors. Sex workers tell of being forced to perform sex for fear of suffering numerous violations including beatings, the withholding of payments, illegal confinement, forced labor, the over consumption of drink ratios, forced them to sexually serve police officers and having their every move monitored. . It is reported that it was "virtually impossible to find people who had not been sexually abused by the owners of the clubs or the managers of the entertainment-promotion agencies"

Korean prostitution in Japan

Park Jae-wan, a lawmaker of the largest opposition Grand National Party claimed that about 30,000 South Koreans, male and female, were working as prostitutes in Japan, including college students and housewives, on holiday visas.

Trafficking within Korea

Following decades of agricultural disasters and the failure of social, economic, and political policies,100,000 of North Koreans have attempted to leave the country where they have become vulnerable to criminal trafficking networks. The border areas are a hub for gangs who abduct or coerce women into prostitution, sex slavery and labor exploitation. With increases in mobility and industrialization, agricultural life is less attractive to women. It is not uncommon for corrupt border guards and government officials in North Korea to assist the traffickers.

Women are leaving fully expectant of selling themselves in order to survive, others are being abducted or duped into sexual exploitation, female children are still being sold to traffickers by their parents. Women, feeling insecure and in desperate situations in Korea are easily coerced into marriage or prostitution.

Modern Prostitution

The Women’s Studies Center of Ewha Woman’s University found in 1991, that 44.7% of Korean men had their first sexual experiences with a female prostitute, 55.4% answered that prostitution should be allowed to prevent rape and 25.6% were in favor of its legal regulation. In 2003 survey, The Korean Times found 20 % of Korean men aged 20 to 64 pay for some kind of sexual encounter once a week. . Culturally, infidelity is seen a characteristic of masculinity accounting for the increase in the growth of the sex industry.

According to the Institute of Migration the modern Korean sex industry has its roots in the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), when legalized, regulated and developed nationwide. Although a licensed industry ceased to exist, it transformed into an unlicensed but very well-organized trade involving both Korean and foreign women including victims of human trafficking. The US State Department, classified South Korea as one of 23 countries which failed to meet the minimum standards for eliminating sex industry trafficking under the terms of the US 'Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act' in July 2001.

Prostitutes still work in brothels that do little to conceal their activity, other in more sophisticated settings such as "room salon" or a "hostess bar", referred to in Korean as "noraejujeom" or "danlanjujeom". These are venues catering to groups of middle-aged businessmen often on company expenses. No sex takes place on the premises but negotiations for further services are often made elsewhere. Following the establishment of the 'Special Law on Prostitution', new forms of prostitution have started in Korea such as;

• Bangseokjips (방석집), in which small apartment in residential areas are rented where clients visit for sexual services,
• “Show rooms” (쇼방) or “ddeok bars” where women dance on a stage and males select them by the numbers they wear after which they have sex
• Ticket coffee shops
• Meetings in bathhouses or (jiimjiibang)
• Daeddalbangs (대딸방) which are massage parlors where nude or semi-nude college-aged girls offer sexual services, the name originating from the merging of 대 (an abbreviation of 대학교 or university) and 딸 (an abbreviation of 딸딸 or masturbation)
• low priced "Doll rooms” where men enter a room to have sex with a life-size doll to avoid the possibility of breaking the law
• Wonjo gyoje, or "compensated dating" with older men
• Street-level prostitution exists for the poor
• Highway prostitution for truck drivers
• Women taxi drivers exist who provide additional sexual services
• call girls services in city downtowns (보도방), which take introduction fees and act as middlemen.

According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, there were 40,123 so-called singing-room and room salons, about 3,000 steambaths, barber shops, 535 massage par lors, a total number of 43,658 establishments. The unofficial count is expected to be higher. 29% of the college age sex workers report that the biggest reason for becoming prostitutes was to pay for tuition fees, 25% wanted more spending money, 47% said they just wanted to make money quickly and had an urgent need.

Massage parlors offering sexual services sometimes distinguish themselves from legitimate parlors by advertising with the word "anma", sometimes with large neon signs. Following the enactment of the Special Law in 2004, there was a crackdown on red-light districts. A move many thought was more toward releasing real estate for residential development than striking a blow against prostitution. While many of the brothels in those areas were forced to close, the crackdown came as quickly as it went. Prostitution was driven more underground but also became a more competitive business with lower prices and more services. Well-known redlight districts are full of "glass houses", where girls wait for customers in small rooms with curtains. "Call Girls" are a major portion of prostitution in Korea, sexual services usually taking place at hotels.

In 1996 Korean police arrested staff and members of the Korea Special Tourism Association who had brought in women from foreign countries on government issued entertainment visas (E-6), charging commission fees from venue owners at US Military camptowns, forging contracts of employment, and them forced them to engage in prostitution The Korean Police acknowledged that E-6 visas were "nothing more than a cover for prostitution". Foreign women, as "Juicy Girls" were considered "essential to the survival of the [US] military camptown business" as part of an arrangement that the Korean government are just as culpable at the US Military. The recruitment agencies are committing illegal acts and do not have the permission of their government to be engaged in such business.

In 2004, thousands came together in protests about the closure of brothels in Korea. 15 Korean sex workers began a hunger strike in November of that year which end in January 2005 and in November 2005, the Suwon Supreme Court ruled the Daeddalbang massage parlors offering sexual services and staffed by female students to be legal. and nine former South Korean prostitutes filed lawsuits against their pimps seeking punitive damages in a landmark legal case due to the failure of their pimps to pay out advances of as much as 10 million won ($8,400). The women say they were lured into prostitution under the age of 18 and are suffering emotional distress.

In December 2006, The Ministry for Gender Equality, in an attempt to address the issue of demand for prostitutes among, offered cash to companies whose male employees pledged not to pay for sex after office parties.

The United States Embassy in Korea stated that, "The domestic crackdown on prostitution may have decreased the demand for commercial sexual exploitation in Korea, but it has caused an increase in the number of Korean women and girls moving abroad for commercial sexual exploitation."

Underage prostitution

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Korean Women’s House reports an average of 100,000 runaway children and youths per year, many of whom are employed in entertainment establishments for adults and are sexually exploited.

In a report published in the Korea Times, about 20% of teenage prostitutes in Pusan began working when they were under 14. The Pusan Metropolitan Police Agency stated that the motivation of between 31 to 36% was to sell sex for a living, many have run away from home. Others chose to prostitute themselves to make money to buy fashion goods. 1.2% began prostitution under the age of 12, 17.6% between the ages of 13 and 14 and 58.8% between the ages of 15 and 16. They received between 50,000-150,000 won per prostitution job ($35 to $105). On February 10, 2006, Chung Ah-young of The Korea Times wrote that 1 out of 5 prostitutes begin sex trade under age of 14.

Of the men using the girls, office workers accounted for 30.6% and 22.9% were independent business owners, 82.9% of the transactions were arranged via the Internet.

In another report by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, among teenage female prostitutes; 11.7% were 14 years old, 17.1% were 15 years old, 30% were 16 years old and 15.8% were 17 years old. 8 girls were under the age of 13. 40.8% of their male clients were in their 20s, 43.6% were in their 30s, 12.7% were in their 40s and 1.1% were over 50. The numbers of child prostitutes is unknown and has been grossly exagerated in the past

Child Rights, a nongovernment organization whose aim is to eradicate child prostitution in South Korea found that there are approximately 300,000 children in sexual servitude. In a report to UN Special Session Geneva about 'Victims of Child Prostitution Living in Shelters and Rehabilitation Institution Managed, Licensed or Supervised by the State' Child Rights found victims of child prostitution were further punished and abused. A quarter of sexual crime victims are children. Over 50 % of criminal charges of child prostitution and child sexual abuse are dismissed by Korean judges

The United States Embassy in Korea states that a "growing number of Korean men continue to travel to the Taiwan, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia for child sex tourism".

Korea's government has never prosecuted a Korean national for child sex tourism not has it ratified the 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

Transsexual and Male prostitution

Korea also has a long history of male and transvestite prostitution including those amongst the chajewhi, or “little-brother attendants” of the nobility, and the namsadang performing artists, especially the ppriri, or "newcomers", and midong, or "beautiful boys", who played the penetrated sex roles in their performances and were male prostitutes for the rural ruling class.

According to Kim Keun-bae, a former namsadang performer, some senior performers made extra income by letting their male lovers sleep with the servants in the villages where the troup was performing, an opinion that is supported by Song Sokha of the Society of Korean Studies (Chindanhakoe) who wrote that the namsadang were troupes of performers whose chief purpose was to earn money as boy prostitutes from the Yi Dynasty, direct;y imitating the highly organized groups of lower-class female prostitute-entertainers. The system continued up until the early 20th century.

Prostitution in Korean Popular Culture

Documentary:

• Camp Arirang.1995. (Directed by Diana S. Lee and Grace Yoonkyung Lee), featuring a 50 year old Korean ex-sex worker at a government subsidized camptown for U.S. airforce personnel and the experience of the fatherless mixed-race children of the sex workers. [5]

Movies:

Both male and under-age female modern prostitution have featured in contemporary cinema and released internationally, e.g.

• 'No Regret' (Huhwihaji anha) (2006) by Hee-il Leesong about a male orphan, forced to leave the orphanage at the mandatory 18 years old who finds himself unemployed and becomes a male prostitute at a host bar in Seoul where where straight men sleep with rent-boys.
• 'Naughty Girls' (Dasepo sonyo) (2006) by Je-yong Lee which features school age prostitution.
• 'Samaria' (2003) by director Kim Ki Duk about Jae-Young, an amateur school girl prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin solicits for her.
• 'Sex Is Zero' (색즉시공, Saekjeuk shigong) (2002) by Yoon Je-kyoon, which involved jokes about college boys selling themselves to middle age women.

Novels:

• Silver Stallion : A Novel of Korea by Ahn Junghyo (January 1990) in which following the American invasion a young boy called Mansik watches his mother raped by soldiers, shunned by other villagers and seeking work as a prostitute to feed his siblings.

See also

• The Construction of U.S. Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Transformation and Resistance by Na Young Lee, Ph.D., 2006 [6]
• A Study of Industrial Prostitution by Byun W., & J. Hwang. Women’s Studies Forum [Korean Women’s Development Institute], 15:211-230 1999.
• International Women in South Korea's Sex Industry: A New Commodity Frontier by Joon K. Kim‌ and May Fu‌. Asian Survey May/June 2008, Vol. 48, No. 3, Pages 492–513
• Sexual Slavery in Korea by Matsui Yayori and Lora Sharnoff. University of Nebraska Press, 'Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies', Vol. 2, No. 1, (Spring, 1977), pp. 22-30
• South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor by Katharine H. S. Moon. University of California Press 'Asian Survey', Vol. 39, No. 2, (Mar. - Apr., 1999), pp. 310-327
• Korea Church Women United (KCWU), Lisaeng Tourism: A Nation-wide Survey Report on Conditions in Four Areas: Seoul, Pusan, Cheju, Kyongu, Research Issue Material, no. 3. (Seoul, 1984)
• J.T. Takagi and Hye Jung Park, The Women Outside, documentary (New York: Third World Newsreel, 1995)
• International Sex Traffickingin Women in Korea: Its Causes, Consequences and Countermeasures. Seol Dong-Hoon. AJWS Vol. 10 No. 2, 2004. pp. 7-47 [7]

External links

• Sealing Cheng (2004-12-22). "Korean sex trade 'victims' strike for rights". The Asia Times. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• David Scofield (2004-05-26). "Sex and denial in South Korea". The Asia Times. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• "Thousands of Women Forced Into Sexual Slavery For US Servicemen in South Korea". Feminist Daily News Wire. 2002-09-09. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• William H. McMichael (2002-08-12). "Sex slaves". Navy Times. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Donald MacIntyre. "Base Instincts". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |2= (help); Text "2002-08-05" ignored (help)
• Child exploitation not new to stricken region
• Illegal Prostitution Occurring in Massage Parlors and Bathhouses