Prostitution in South Korea

Prostitution in South Korea is an illegal industry. 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. The number of prostitutes dropped by 18 percent to 269,000 during the same period. The sex trade involved some 94 million transactions in 2007, down from 170 million in 2002. The amount of money traded for prostitution was over 14 trillion won, much less than 24 trillion won in 2002.

In 2003, the Korean Institute of Criminology announced that 330,000, which takes 1 of 25 of Korean women over 20s in age may be engaged in sex industry. However, Korean Feminist Association alleged that at least 800,000 Korean women would participate in the prostitution industry.

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 people responsible for this policy claimed that they want to put an end to a culture in which men get drunk at parties and go on to buy sex.

Historical context

With the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, state-registered prostitution was made illegal by the governing United States authority in 1947, and the law was re-confirmed by the new South Korean parliament in 1948. Nevertheless, prostitution flourished in the next decades as the law was not treated seriously.

Human trafficking

See also: Human rights in South Korea

South Korea is both a source and destination country for human trafficking; mainly Russian and Southeast Asian women are brought into the country for prostitution by Korean organized crime, many of whom are tricked into thinking they will have a legitimate job. Many female migrant workers are recruited by Korean employment agencies to come to the country to work in factories. They are often later deceived and forced into prostitution .

Though as recently as 2001 the government received low marks on the issue, in recent years the government has made significant strides in its enforcement efforts. 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. However, despite the efforts to crackdown on the industry and human trafficking, the sex trade in Korea evolves around the new laws that come in to place, with new variations, such as bangseokjips (방석집), where prostitutes rent apartments in residential areas, and their clients continue to visit for sexual services. 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".

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 US State Department 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. However, these commendable 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."

Modern Prostitution

Today, while a number of prostitutes do work in brothels that do little to conceal their activity, most are believed to work in much more sophisticated settings, where sex might take place only at the discretion of the woman herself. A "room salon" or a "hostess bar" (referred to in Korean as "noraejujeom/danlanjujeom") is a venue where groups of middle-aged businessmen, usually using the company credit card, can drink with young hostesses. No sex takes place on the premises but negotiations for further services are often made elsewhere. While the hostesses very often engage in sexual activities with the customer, they can sometimes refuse sexual advances entirely. This seems to be especially true when the customer is of non-Korean ethnicity.

Massage parlors offering sexual services sometimes distinguish themselves from legitimate parlors by advertising with the word "anma", sometimes quite openly with large neon signs. Following the enactment of the Special Law in 2004, there was a crackdown on red-light districts; while many of the brothels in those areas were forced to close, the crackdown came as quickly as it went, with the result that 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. Call Girl sex services usually take place at hotels.

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)