South Korea sex trade revamps after clampdown changes
sex workers lives
Seoul - South Korean call girl Lee Hyun-mi faces a tough
choice.
Two years ago the government launched an ambitious campaign to
stamp out the world's oldest profession in South Korea, putting
many sex industry workers, like Lee, in a bind.
Since the clampdown, Lee faces the choice of applying for a
government programme to take her out of the sex trade, turning to a
broker for an overseas prostitution ring or joining a growing union
movement for sex workers seeking to legalise their profession and
improve work conditions.
Prostitution has been illegal in South Korea since 1948, but until
recently authorities turned a blind eye to the booming sex industry
that belies South Korea's reputation as a straight-laced Confucian
society.
The government campaign, in which thousands of sex workers and
their clients have been arrested, has cut down on the number of
brothels and provided a way out of the sex trade for thousands of
women.
But it has also made it more difficult for police to crack down on
prostitution.
With fewer brothels, sex workers have turned to fronts such as
coffee shops and karaoke parlours. They rely more on technology
such as the Internet to arrange assignations with clients without
the authorities being any the wiser.
"The new law turns us into criminals and forces us to go
underground or abroad where we have no protection of the law," said
Lee, 26, who used an alias on an Internet chat site for sex
workers.
Striking Prostitutes
Lee was one of hundreds of sex workers who put on dark glasses,
baseball hats and surgical masks to conceal their identities in one
of many strikes by prostitutes in Korea over the past year.
South Korea is known for its protests and labour actions, but
unions for sex workers are new.
They have attracted the interest of thousands of sex workers and
shut down trade in some red light districts for a few hours, but
have yet to effect any real change in society, activists
said.
The workers want their trade to be legalised, caps set on the
number of hours they can work a day as well as standards for
working conditions. The best way to accomplish these goals is to
set up legal brothels that are highly regulated, they said.
Prostitution is a lucrative industry in South Korea.
About 20 percent of adult males in South Korea bought sex four
times a month on average while 4.1 percent of women in their 20s
made their livings as sex workers, according to the most recent
Korean Institute of Criminology survey conducted in 2003.
It found that the sex trade, with Amsterdam-style windowed
bordellos and fronts in barber shops, raked in revenue of about 24
trillion won ($25 billion) a year in the world's 11th largest
economy.
In 2002, South Korean police arrested 3,500 people in the sex
trade. But since the crackdown was launched, some 16,951
prostitutes were arrested in 2004 and 18,508 in 2005, the Ministry
on Gender Equality said.
The campaign has encouraged more than 1,200 people a year to enter
a government programme that offers a 7.6 million won ($8,000) grant
for job training and other expenses as well as a place at a halfway
house to help them leave the profession.
The programme also provides interest-free loans of up to 30 million
won to help former prostitutes start their own businesses.
"One day I looked at my reflection in the mirror and couldn't stop
crying. I realised I had to stop what I was doing," wrote one
former prostitute who went into the programme.
The women, who asked not to be identified, said in an interview via
email with Reuters that she now works as a beautician. She advised
others to follow her path.
"The government alone cannot stamp out the sex trade. But the
government and communities have to work together to help and save
prostitutes," she said.
US Bound
Some prostitutes scoff at the government programme, saying it
offers too little money to help them pay off their debts or start
businesses and too little support once they are out, according to
postings on Internet sites for the sex workers' labour
movement.
"The current government effort to rehabilitate sex workers is in
fact driving them underground, especially the majority who are held
by debt to brothel owners," said Choi Duk-hyo, a human rights
activist.
The campaign against prostitution at home has forced many Korean
sex workers to pack up and head overseas, often to the United
States where they accumulate huge debts to their traffickers and
face a harsh life.
In August, U.S. authorities broke up a Korean prostitution ring
operating in East Coast cites such as New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore and Washington. Korean prostitution rings were also
busted in California earlier this year.
"We are not a social evil," sex industry worker Lee said. "Most of
the customers at brothels are working-class people. It's not a
place for fancy parties."