Nine former prostitutes, seven of whom entered the business as underage youths, are suing their former bosses for pain and suffering, unpaid wages, and reparations for human rights abuses. The seven former under-aged prostitutes are demanding W100 million each, while the other two are asking for W50 million each. The legal road these women have followed was not an easy one — one court turned down a previous case against a brothel owner for failing to pay wages, ruling that since prostitution is an illegal activity, the concept itself of “wages” cannot exist in that business. Another of the plaintiffs attempted to testify in a coworker’s case that her friend’s debts were nullified, only to be suddenly arrested by police acting on a tip from the brothel owner, the plaintiff in her coworker’s case. As I’ve posted before, the biggest problem many prostitutes in Korea face is debt — while the concept of “wages” may not exist in the business, the idea of debt clearly does. Personally, I have no problem with the idea of prostitution in theory, but in a situation such as exists in Korea, where the trade is technically illegal but in fact clearly tolerated by officials, you’re asking for all sorts of trouble. If you’re going to tolerate prostitution, you need to treat it just like any other business, meaning that there are rules business owners must follow, and legal recourse to those employees wronged by their bosses.
UPDATE: English version of the story here, via the Korea Times.
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5 Comments
I remember fondly back to Winter 1996 and the red glow from the lights of the prostitution district next to the train station in Pyongtaek. I never took part, just walked through, they didn’t want an American for a customer anyway. I hope the girls are able to get some kind of compensation. Then the Korean Government needs to do something serious about the prostitution problem. You got clubs in Songtan holding girls as virtual prisoners. For an illegal activity its amazing how open it is.
The largest problem when it comes to prostitution in Korea is that very many of these women are held against their will, and a few years back a whole bunch died when their brothel went ablaze in Gunsan, because they were all locked in.
The US State Dept’s “Trafficking in Persons Report” [link] for North and South is worth looking at if the subject interests you.
Last year, in Myeongdong, a Russian woman asked me for directions to the Russian embassy but she quickly changed the subject when a Korean muscle man caught up with her.
This debt thing with prostitutes is everywhere in Asia.
In Hong Kong it is the same thing as it is in China.
Usually triads lure underage girls via newly recruited underage [school going] triads.
These girls are stupid to believe that the guy [who they fall in love with at school] loves them.
Then usually a fight scene is enacted [just for show] and the girl is terrified to see her boyfriend beaten up.
Here in come the triads and somehow lend money to the girl who wants to repay for her “boy friend”.
More such drama follow and before she realizes it, the girl is screwed [literally].
Is it the same in Korea?
Prostitution is an age old business since centuries. It is pitiful that most governments ignore it under farcical guise of morality.
I don’t mean prostitution should be tolerated or even encouraged. But as long as there will be men on this planet, there will be prostitutes. It is nature.
If everyone accepts this fact, I think that will eventually help prostitutes and at least guarantee their legal and social status.
Just my thoughts…
Cheers!
i’ve got a good Korean friend who is an auditor for a major accounting firm. He told me that several times, when he was auditing companies around the peninsula, the audited companies would actually sent prostitutes to his hotel room. My friend who is happily married and monogamous, had to allow the prostitute into his hotel room, hang out for awhile and send her out later.
and because of Korean culture, he had to simply accept the offer and pretend to go along with it.
Korea is the strangest combination of Confucian (and now, Christian) conservatism mixed with a drunken licentiousness that would have impressed gangsterland Chicago.
To bibimbap: Unlike Christianity where sex outside of marriage is clearly considered wrong, in Confucianism, it there’s nothing really that against it. In Joseon/ChosOn times and even to some degree today, a man of great wealth and position is sort of expected to have a few women around, or regularly. For pre-modern Korean men, the problem with concubinage was the creation of illegitimate children who you could not be part of your legitimate liniage group or hold public office, no matter how much you wanted them to be. The sex itself wasn’t a problem.
I remember when Hyunda’s founder Chung Joo-young ran for president in 1992. At one rare point along the way, someone, a woman, asked him how he could explain his legendary assortment of women. His response was “Well, have you ever heard any of them complain?”
I of course agree with everything else you said and that story’s a genuine classic.