Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:32, 30 July 2008

Template:Totally-disputed

This article may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (December 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (December 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Prostitution in South Korea is a $20 billion-a-year industry. The sex industry in South Korea is big business, accounting for $20 billion, or 4.1 percent of the nation's total gross domestic product in 2002, just behind agriculture at 4.4 percent, according to the same report by the Korean Institute of Criminology.

The Korean Administration announced in 2003 that 1 of 25 people of the Korean women is a prostitute. and The Korean woman group announced that 800,000 people of the Korea women engage in prostitution industry at least.

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

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 Immigation 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,in Virginia,many Korean women is arrested for the prostitution.In Los Angeles,Los Angeles Police Department said that "90% of prostitutes arrested every month 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.

References

1. "Changing attitude toward sex threatens South Korea". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved 2008-01-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
2. 800,000 prostitutesJoongAng Ilbo21.June.2003
3. "S Koreans offered cash for no sex". BBC News. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
4. Donald Macintyre/Tongduchon. "Base Instincts". TIME magazine.
5. Lee Hyang Won. "Reality of Women Migrant Workers in South Korea". 평화만들기. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
6. David Scofield (25). "Korea's 'crackdown culture' - now it's brothels". Asia Times. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
7. "Marmot's Hole". Retrieved 2008-01-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
8. "하루면 '미국의 밤' 물들여" (in Korean). Naver News. Retrieved 2008-01-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
9. "Sex Trafficking". The San Francisco Chronicle.
10. Deanne Fitzmaurice. ""Sex Trafficking" (Video). The San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
11. Korean woman 8,000`prostitution' in U.S.A.JoongAng Ilbo21.June.2006
12. "Trafficking in Person's report: June 2008" (PDF). United States Government State Department.
13. "Trafficking in Person's report: June 2008" (PDF). United States Government State Department.

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)

• Articles needing cleanup from December 2007
• Cleanup tagged articles without a reason field from December 2007
• Misplaced Pages pages needing cleanup from December 2007
• Misplaced Pages articles needing copy edit from December 2007
• Prostitution in South Korea