Yonhap reports that while most Koreans in Migukland are welcoming Korea’s inclusion on the US Visa Waiver Program, there is concern among some expatriate Koreans that it will also lead to an increase in illegal aliens, and this might prove burdensome on the Korean community.
Most of the piece is full of welcoming quotes by Korean and Korean-American business groups, tour companies, educators, and the like.
Scroll down near the end, though, and you have a Korean consulate official playing the role of buzzkill, warning that the number of illegal migrants — centered in the entertainment industry (i.e., prostitutes) — could also increase, and that measures to prevent this were urgently needed.
According to Yonhap, some 5,000 illegal migrant Korean women are believed to be working as prostitutes in the United States.
The official said it was now possible for people who couldn’t enter the United States in the normal fashion to get in, and he believed mechanisms were needed to stop illegal migrants before they got here.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Well… the concerns that the visa waiver will increase the flow of prostitutes to the U.S. is probably true.
With consumer debt being the way it is in Korea, there are probably tons of young Korean women who have debts to pay…
This could get ugly real fast. I hope Korea can keep its dirty little secret — its “nightlife” — to itself. If the nightlife gets transplanted to say, New York, that would be a PR nightmare for the Korean government.
Wow. How terrible for America that prostitution is such supply-driven one-way street. I feel so sorry for American towns that will be forced to take on these services.
Or will the illegal Korean “entertainers” and “masseuses” only be providing services to other visa waiver abusers?
Trust me, the demand is already there. I’ve met countless Korean/Korean-American guys in the US who look forward to their yearly summer trips to Korea just for the dan-lans and the rooms. More prostitutes in the US means more high-profile crackdowns like the ones periodically seen in California. And remember, Korean prostitution, by its nature, always involves a good deal of human trafficking. The high-income, non-exploited prostitutes are largely a myth, at least for the ones that end up here in the US.
Trust me, the demand is already there. I’ve met countless Korean/Korean-American guys in the US who look forward to their yearly summer trips to Korea just for the dan-lans and the rooms.
So what you’re saying Timmy is that the army of illegal Korean prostitutes will mainly be servicing your buddies and other Koreans? I’m glad to know that non-Koreans won’t be involved at all. Main Street America is safe!
So, what’s the rub ?
Choice A)
Black, foul-mouthed, crack smokin’, A.I.D.S. infected, Ding-Dong & grape for breakfast eatin, ain’t washed “its” nasty ass in weeks, tree trunk where “its” hole should be, hangin’ out by the Lincoln Tunnel at all hours of the night, $2.00 a shot, skank-ass ho slut.
Choice B)
A young, fine looking Korean woman.
Why are we concerned about such matters ?
User-81,
Your sarcasm is duly noted. But forgive me for asking: what exactly is your point?
Your sarcasm is duly noted. But forgive me for asking: what exactly is your point?
Talk about visa-free waivers for Korean typically falls apart into a sweeping indictment of Koreans as probably whores while the corn-fed American johns whose demand drives the process escape much criticism at all.
User-81,
You could have saved me a lot of confusion if you’d simply stated so to begin with. I’m happy to state that I am also categorically against sweeping indictments of Koreans as whores. I really am.
Just for the record, my main focus of criticism is on the Korean human traffickers, i.e. the people who profit off of “forced” prostitution, in the most literal sense of the word. (Distinguished from the same word used to explain how all prostitutes are, in one way or another, “forced” into the profession due to proverty and other social conditions.) Of course, the demand side should not escape criticism, either, but the demand side is equally ugly in the US as in Korea. The supply side, however, is much, much uglier in Korea.
You could have saved me a lot of confusion if you’d simply stated so to begin with.
What fun is that?
I’m happy to state that I am also categorically against sweeping indictments of Koreans as whores. I really am.
I never understood why people married to or dating Korean women would want to perpetuate the idea that Korea is full of whores and sluts. Because people will look at your woman and think the same.
The supply side, however, is much, much uglier in Korea.
So all the non-Korean prostitutes in America are like Pretty Woman? How do you think the women (and men) in America get to that point and end up staying at that point? My guess is that it’s worse in Korea but “much, much” worse? I’d have to study up on the topic in America before I went that far.
I can understand the concerns and the negativity here. But despite some problems, over all, hasn’t visitors from Korea to America, a positive boon for the American economy? After all, South Korea always has a chronic and large service deficit with the United States which is likely to get worse with this announcement. But I maybe wrong. Maybe it would have made more sense if South Korea kept all its dirty illegal immigrants/whores in South Korea, and the United States kept all its whiny ass-ed drug peddlers and pedophile English teachers in United States.
5,000 is the number for maybe NYC or the NYC metro area – at least according to my friends in the Manhattan DA’s office – and it’s gone down since the last time I actually saw my friends in person 15 years ago, partly as a result of enforcement efforts and partly because 15 years ago was when the last bonfire of the vanities roared and then flamed out.
“…Korean prostitution… involves a good deal of human trafficking…”
Say what? Why are you lumping in “women volunteering for a bad situation (read: bad choices) with “kidnapped women (read: a real crime)”?
“Trafficking” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
I’m ambivalent about an influx of whores. If, however, we can find some way to cause an influx of skanks, then I’m all for it.
Lupin, I haven’t heard that argument in 5 years, and back then it was a high school kid who just didn’t know better. Please do a little research — nothing fancy, just google or wikipedia — before making such bold assertions. Just to give you a head start, moving women from brothel to brothel, saddling them with artificial debt therefrom, and, in extreme cases, confining them to jail-like rooms IS trafficking by ALL definitions. It is still rampant in Korea (although there certainly are some prostitutes who are free from these practices), and it accounts for almost all of the Korean prostitutes who end up in the US.
By the way, I’m all for the Visa waiver program, and I believe US law enforcement will continue to do a much better job of rooting out these problems than their Korean counterparts. It could get a little embarrassing for the Korean government, that’s all.
KrZ:
I’m ambivalent about an influx of whores. If, however, we can find some way to cause an influx of skanks, then I’m all for it.
I thought you would be hoping for more people with drug habits they couldn’t kick.
#6- Yeah…cause it’s common knowledge that any other race/ethnicity of whore is incapable of being:
‘foul-mouthed, crack smokin’, A.I.D.S. infected, Ding-Dong & grape for breakfast eatin, ain’t washed “its” nasty ass in weeks, tree trunk where “its” hole should be, hangin’ out by the Lincoln Tunnel at all hours of the night, $2.00 a shot, skank-ass ho slut.’
I mean…it’s just virtually impossible! Especially for korean women. As you know, they have that ’special korean gene’ that makes all of this bounce right off of them!
You….are real….’special’. I bet you hear that a lot, huh?
19. Lol #6 was obviously a reference to past-experience… don’t be too hard on him.
Hey Lana,
Stop hangin’ around the Lincoln Tunnel late at night, …and oh yeah, wash yo’ nasty ass.
I’m sick of seeing you there every time the tunnel traffic backs up on my way to Jersey.
……and as for you B.M.
Your schtick is weak, you’d better hang on this board until you develop some real world chops.
Keep pluggin’ though !
Tootles !
I’m not quite sure the Korean prostitutes are in the
US to service non-Korean customers.
I invite anyone to go over to NYC Koreatown in Manhattan
after 11pm. You’ll see a familiar sight to us here in Korea–
the black car prostitute service–though I’m not sure if the
NYC cops would be as aware in terms of the actual reason behind the long lines of parked black, tinted-windowed cars with shady-looking drivers.
Why is it that every time I take a group of my Korean students to NYC,
several of my male students always get propositioned by a K. pimp
as they are on their way to a late (and expensive) K. dinner in
Koreatown? Every single time!
The benefits far out weigh the short comings. There are so many illegal immigrants in the US from just about everywhere, and the inevitable slight increase that will occur here will be just that – slight.
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