Recent busts of prostitution rings in California have focused attention on focused attention on Korea’s “prostitution exports,” a product of a number of factors including Korea’s tougher anti-prostitution laws, local economic woes and increased Korean tourism abroad:
“With the domestic crackdown on prostitution strengthening since the anti-prostitution law took effect last September, it seems an increasing number of people are attempting to take their business overseas,” said police Sgt. Yang Sang-mo at the National Police Agency’s women and juvenile affairs division.
The police agency couldn’t give a detailed estimate on the current size or extent of international sex trafficking regarding Koreans.
However, police believe the number of Korean women working abroad as prostitutes is on the rise, with cases reported not only in developed countries such as the U.S. and Japan, but also more recently in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia.
The Chosun Ilbo pointed out that online, there are a number of websites at Daum dedicated to fixing prostitutes up with jobs abroad. The paper also noted, however, that virtual “slave contracts” make the search for greener pastures in sexual services markets overseas more difficult that the girls may hope.
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Daily linklets 5th July
It wasn’t just the British involved in the opium trade: the Americans were up to their noses in it too. A new Hong Kong “blogazine” called Civic Express (like the word blog isn’t bad enough already) from the Civic Exchange grou (via Chatter Garden…
Isn?€™t it ironic that for almost a year now South Korea has been cracking down on prostitution and human trafficking with everyone seemingly perfectly happy to at least insinuate that the whole reason prostitution exists in Korea is the US soldiers create all the demand. Of course we know that is not the case-a while back there was a posting here about a Japanese tourist that got busted with his pants down in some brothel in Seoul but the image the media seems happy to portray is that Korea is taking its women off the market and away from the foreigners that have thus far driven them into this perverse trade. I am not gloating, for anyone who has studied Korean society in the US, it is nothing new that Korean organized crime has had a national prostitution ring in operation in the US (and probably other locales as well).
What I do find very interesting is that the news in Korea made it sound like at least some of these women paid $10K to $20K to be taken into the US with at least the hope of being able to legalize their immigrant status at some point. I am not prone to believe everything that is reported but I wonder if that is not the case with some of these people and if the highly restrictive US immigration policies of the US haven?€™t exacerbated this in some way.
I know the standard ?€?we have to make sure we are not accepting terrorists as immigrants?€™ line but the whole US immigration system is so dysfunctional. It punishes the people that try to immigrate legally and rewards those who choose to do so illegally. I would not be surprised if the women involved are all given asylum on humanitarian grounds. I am not saying they might not deserve it-what I am saying is that in the end, it is easier for them to immigrate than to do it the legal way and then the those are the people the US ends up with, not the RD engineers with masters degrees in EE or some other science with functional families.
Hoes will be hoes. Makes you wonder if the comfort women weren’t merely willing (yet underpaid) participants.
Mark,
it’s absolutely disgusting that you’d write something like that. what you ought to do is go down to the japanese embassy on any given wednesday and watch those poor ladies protesting. you could ask them yourself.
Yes…I am kicking myself in the arse now for my choice of language in comment #4.
What I’m saying is that so many Korean women willingly whore themselves at home and abroad, which weakens the legitimate claims of the actual comfort women. Furthermore, the former comfort women, by insisting on more and more monetary compensation rather than settling with the apology of the Japanese government, are weakening their cause by making it seem to the casual observer that they only wanted to get paid for services rendered.
“apology of the Japanese government, are weakening”
Moot point. This has nothing to do with Comfort women, WWII, and Japan. By the way, Japanese government tried to apologize was in 1995, and the bill was shot down in the Japanese Diet. But I think your round about point was, Korean women = whores.
And yes, I do think that stuff like this makes Korean women look like whores, not that all of them are whores.
seeingsomethingeles
please check with those elderly women in the japanese embassy. they are like 12-14 yo when japanese were annexed korea. i dont know, were they real? isnt a someone who try to gain something out of using these elderly women. look, dont you see there are so many “blind old person” in subway who can just walk without cane after they get off subway… very sorry for the situation. give these elderly person some pension!!
japanese are quite maniac to check what the trueth is. japanese government have once made thorough investigation. all, not most, were fake, by the support of some sort of civil organizations….sorry to say, but koreans are so much get used to tell lie to gain something. that is their nature after 5000000 years of their history of chinese affiliation.
“japanese government have once made thorough investigation. all, not most, were fake”
See what I mean? Nice apology there.
do the japanese have to apologize to the fake claim that korean have made? see what happend recent korean fishermen did in the east sea? the captain of the boat claimed he was beaten by the japanese, but a day later he was in his full energy stood up said fuck japan!!!
he even said he would sue japan, but a few weeks later he took it back…..
having said above i still try to educate, somehow, those japs who just being so anti-korean after world cup of 2002. you should really watch what korean did to their match against italy or portugal. they were simply un-fair to me at all. although major japanese media did not and have not report unfairness of koreans have done, some people now know how unfair koreans could be.
Two things. Comfort women aren’t fakes. Only Japan and its apologizers insist it’s fake. What did “Korea” did against Italy or Portugal in WC2002 matches that was so unfair?
Re: Mark’s comment that so many [Korean] women willingly “whore” themselves at home and abroad that one must take the comfort women’s stories with a grain of salt — wow. By that logic, it’s possible to since there are a lot of men who willingly work in coal mines, it should be okay to kidnap other men to force them to work in coal mines.
Prostitution should be legal, just as coal-mining is legal. Free people should be free to earn a living in whatever way they want, so long as it doesn’t infringe on others’ rights. But don’t you think forcing people to work in a certain profession, against their will, is wrong? Holy cow.
I agree with Brendan-those that have not been should take a trip to Amsterdam where prostitution is legal. The women are protected, they all have security so there are no pimps or and violence against them is almost non-existent. They pay taxes and make a pretty decent living and most importantly, have access to healthcare. It one of the weirdest tourist attractions I have ever seen many people that go for the sites, whole families in fact, but seemingly not very many ride the rides.
Comfort women did exist.
What Koreans have been hiding is that the women were getting paid.
Several years ago,a former Korean comfort woman æ?‡??‰??? came to Japan to draw her money which she made as “comfort woman” from post office.
The amount was enough to build more than 10 houses in 60 years ago.
All the Korean comfort women were hired or sold by Kisaeng agents just like other Japanese comfort women.
Remember Kisaeng diplomacy under Park Chung-hee?
And the culture is still alive.
Interesting. What Gorea also isn’t saying is the age of many of the former “comfort women” who were “enlisted.” Nor does he talk about the rather “interesting” contraceptive methods these women “volunteered” to get.
[...] rivacy to the ultimate fallout of a drunken brawl. Korean working girls are leaving their homeland, trying to live the American dream. They [...]
no doubt comfort women existed from all over asia, thats why Im amazed why so many korean girls hook in japan, the japanese guys must love it!
I see, it’s the American soldiers fault again!!!!!