(This is a little old, but I didn’t find it in the Hole. If this has been posted here before, will our Dear Leader please delete it.)
This story from The Japan Times starts out innocently enough:
Yoon, a feisty 32-year-old Korean woman with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, is happy to be living and working in her newly adopted home of Japan.
Within months of settling here, she set up her own business, a Korean-style massage parlor, which she runs out of her Tokyo condominium. She says she employs several other Korean women, who perform massage of a decidedly sexual nature.
“The job is tough, but it’s a lot of fun,” Yoon laughs.
As a Korean living in Japan, Yoon (a pseudonym) is hardly unique. Over half a million ethnic Koreans reside here.
And now for the rest of the story.
The surprising thing about Yoon is where she came from — North Korea.
She’s one of an estimated 1,000 North Koreans who have escaped their country and ended up living in Japan, Weekly Playboy says. Like Yoon, nearly all are female and work in the sex industry, according to the magazine’s source, a documentary filmmaker from South Korea, whose name is undisclosed.
Read the rest on your own. As you can imagine, a publication called Weekly Playboy puts a more positive spin on the story than you would get from others.
Some defectors have had a difficult time adjusting to life in South Korea and have sought greener pastures elsewhere (including the USA).
(Hat tip to Japan Probe.)
15 Comments
tragic, if you ask me…
Hummm… that is sad.
One thing that is not addressed is the human migration toil if NK collapses. People are going to move out of that failed state in alarming numbers and these people are not going to be South Koreans in terms of mind set and work ethic. It will mean that there will be Koreans who live and work like south east asians (not saying that’s bad, but just being descriptive).
That comment sounds like a negative judgment, not descriptive, especially in the context of your comment. You are implying that both North Koreans and Southeast Asians do not work hard like South Koreans.
An ethnic Korean-Japanese friend I knew in Seoul told me about how he had visited a Southeast Asian country (can’t remember which) and decided against moving there because he thought the people had the same mindset as (South) Koreans. He did not elaborate, but tone was the same as yours.
Jtb: She says it’s fun, and laughs, and makes lots of money…why is it tragic? I’m just curious.
Sonagi,
Thanks for jumping all over me and giving me the benifit of the doubt. I am NOT meaning to say that North Koreans and Southeast Asians don’t work hard. I’m sure they work exceptionally hard.
Every region has their migratory group of people who are know for doing the jobs with the three D’s, you know, Dirty, Dangerous and Dull (I’d add an unofficial fourth D and that would be Disrespected, i.e. sex workers). In Western Europe it’s the Poles that have this reputation. In North America it’s Mexicans and other Latin Americans, and yes, in North East Asia it’s Southeast Asians (filipinos at times, but sometimes they get out of this due to their ability to speak English). I know I’m speaking in generalities and you may wish to criticize me for that, but hey, I think the way the world is currently reflects how I’ve outlined things above.
My point is that if North Korea falls suddenly, North Koreans will probably be one of these migratory populations that end up doing a lot of the three (or four) D’s around the Northeast Asian reigion. I don’t think there is anything wrong in saying this as it is pretty dang obvious in my mind.
Just be glad it was Sonagi, WangKon. Just about anyone else around here who jumps on perceived biases is looking for a fight.
And yep, 60% of able-bodied male Norks to Chinese 3D work, another 20% to South Korean 3D work, and spread the able-bodied women around the usual migrant-labor maid destination countries, unless they’re pretty enough to be picked up as wives by 45-year-old Vietnamese farmers.
Who started this 3D term? I never heard of it until last month. I think it was the Korean media. Can anybody confirm?
I know it was in widespread use in Singapore in ‘95.
Actually the term ‘3D Work’ as applied to immigrant populations, to my knowledge, began in Japan in the early 1980s as a translation for the English language press of what were known widely as the ‘3 K’s’ in Japanese… kitanai (dirty), kiken (dangerous), and kitsui (difficult, i.e. physically fatiguing), often in the construction industry, forestry, etc. Work young Japanese wouldn’t do, and so it went to immigrants- some South Koreans in those days, but more typically Brazilians, Bangladeshis, Chinese, and Southeast Asians. And because the work had to be done, it meant the beginning of de facto tolerance for illegal immigrants. A fairly typical pattern in advanced post-industrial countries.
@#5, Wanggon,
Thank you for clarifying what you meant by the vague terms “work ethic” and “mindset.”
If Koreans do flock to other countries to do 3D work, why is this a problem? Global migration already exists on a large scale. Given the choice, I’d rather do 3D work in Malaysia than stay in North Korea.
(I’d add an unofficial fourth D and that would be Disrespected, i.e. sex workers).
It just isn’t so! We have a woman on this blog who aspires to the work and is envious of those who are equipped to do the job.
Okay, you weren’t being judgmental. You were just repeating an idea often heard when people talk about post-collapse scenarios.
Addressed by whom? The reporter? Well, no, the story focused on North Korean sex workers in Japan, not the bigger issue of the ongoing tide of refugees.
Anything written in the Japanese tabloid weeklies needs to be taken with a grain of, no… a salt shaker.
By the way, working “hard” in SK doesn’t necessarily mean working “smart”…
Everybody likes to say that work hard in SK, but results are usually minimum in the same period of time that a smart worker would have his/her things done.
#13,
Good point. “Of course she’s a ‘happy hooker’…it’s all about ensuring that their readers patronize the ‘gentleman’s clubs’ that advertise in their back-pages.” Is that what you’re getting at?