Well, according to cell phone poll data from Gallup Korea posted in the Dong-A Ilbo, 48% of Koreans seem to think so. In particular, 56% of men think the ban has led to an increase in sex crimes, as opposed to only 41% of women who believe so.
48% of Koreans also think prostitution should be permitted in certain areas. Again, many more men (58%) than women (39%) think prostitution should be legalized.
85% of Koreans think we should expand the scope of sex offenders who get chemically castrated. Women (89%) were particularly keen on this.
52% of Koreans think electronic anklets don’t help to reduce the number of sexual assaults, but 67% think releasing the personal info of sex offenders is effective.
For those keeping score at home, the 2004 Special Law on Prostitution marks its eighth year on Sunday. So mark your calendars and celebrate by not employing the services of a prostitute that night.
The Dong-A ran the data along with two opinion pieces, one by a Halla University business professor and the other by an instructor—I’m guessing either sociology or women’s studies—at SNU’s international grad school.
The econ guy argues, essentially:
- The 2004 law did nothing to reduce prostitution. In fact, it just made it more complicated by shutting down the red-light districts.
- The law also caused costs and prices to rise, preventing low-income johns from entering the marketplace.
- Block assess to sex without changing basic desires, and bad things happen. Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker wrote that crime happens if the potential reward outweighs the potential cost. So it goes with sex crimes, too. The cost to sex criminals, if they are caught, is the psychological and physical costs of prison life. For low income folk, the cost of prison life is likewise low. The prof says the fact that most of those caught sexually assaulting kids have been unemployed is no accident.
- He also notes that sex crimes per capita have climbed between 2007 and 2011, as has the percentage of sex crimes against children. Moreover, if you examine crime stats from the six years prior to the 2004 law and the six years after it, we find that the percentage of sexually violent crimes committed by the very poor climbed 3 percentage points, from 70.5% to 73.5%. During the same time, the percentage of thefts committed by the very poor actually fell, and the percentage of burglaries committed by the poor climbed just 1.4 percentage points. What we see, therefore, is a marked increase in sexual violence by low-income offenders since the ban on prostitution.
- Of course, you could strengthen punishments, but that could also lead to more rapists killing their victims to cover up their crimes, as we’re seeing now.
- Basically, we really need to reconsider if the Special Law on Prostitution is worth paying the costs that come with it.
The sociologist, on the other hand, argues:
- The experience in Western countries where prostitution is legal is that it’s impossible to restrict prostitution to certain districts. Moreover, even where prostitution is legal, sexual violence is on the rise.
- If there was a direct connection, sexual violence should have been widespread in the former socialist world, where the sex industry did not develop, or in Northern European nations like Sweden, where there are very few prostitutes. Instead, the reality is quite the opposite.
- The Suwon killer, Oh Won-chun, did regularly frequent prostitutes, but he still tried to rape another woman. Due to the special character of sex, you can’t simply conclude that the easier you can purchase sex, the fewer the sex crimes will be.
- The problems with enforcing the Special Law come from a social culture that views prostitution as a form of entertainment, particularly among the rich and powerful. It’s not right to call for the Special Law to be abolished citing its failure to lower prostitution knowing full well the law can’t be effective as long as there are groups in society supporting the sex industry.
- Prostitutes usually begin working in their teens, come from poor families or broken homes and were unable to learn skills and knowledge demanded by society. Few women volunteer to become prostitutes.
- Sure, prostitution will never completely disappear, but neither will poverty, war, drugs and other crimes. We should still work to reduce them.
- It’s shameful that in a country with a top 10 economy that might soon elect a woman as president that we’ve got so many prostitutes. We should increase jobs for women and expand welfare and education so that women don’t get caught up in prostitution.
Marmot’s Note: It’s worth noting that neither of the writers were women.
{ 80 comments… read them below or add one }
Gotta go with the econ guy over the grievance studies guy.
Econ guy. Sociologist guy, as sociologists usually are, is an idiot.
I think the econ guy is mistaken about motives for rape. Rape is not just about having sex. Rape is a crime involving the domination and abuse of another person – taking something from them and forcing them to bend to the will of the criminal. Forced sex is merely a tool to get that. And, likewise the sexual abuse of kids. 99% of normal men, I’d guess, are just never going to be turned on by kids. It’s only tangentially about sex. It’s almost all about abusing someone else – in this case a defenseless smaller person.
I’d guess another factor accounts for the increase in reported rapes – a greater willingness to report them. The stigma may be lessening. It used to be that women who were raped would never report it. There were stories about thiefs who would purposely rape the woman in the house they targeted, because they knew it was an effective way to blackmail the victims.
And a 3% increase seems pretty small to justify his claims. There might be a handfull of offenders motivated solely by sex – but I bet most are motivated by the desire to abuse.
” Rape is a crime involving the domination and abuse of another person” This is the definition of old rape. Keep in mind that the way “rape” works in a lot of countries now, rape is also a crime of drinking, regret, days on a calendar, etc.
In the US if a man and a woman get equally drunk, he’s apparently capable of forming criminal intent to rape, but her “yes” won’t hold up because she had a glass of wine. It’s a rape, but it has nothing to do with that.
Statutory rape and the like is all about “Today is not the day you have sex with her” yesterday might have been fine (if you just aged out) or tomorrow might be fine (if it’s her birthday). But today you’re not going to make it happen.
A woman can basically agree to sex, have sex, then regret and have the guy charged with rape in some places because maybe she “didn’t really mean it” or “didn’t really feel she could have said no”.
No, the modern meaning of rape, and hence what is a sex crime has changed significantly since the time when rape was all about some guy chasing women down on the street, dragging them into alleys and having their way with them.
A cartoon on rape crimes:
http://image.fun.yahoo.co.kr/yhi/nbbs/fun2012/09/20/fun_1201_1034653_1
In what reality did the 2004 law change much of anything? Gentrification got rid of a few red light districts, not the ban. But the Cheonho-dong red light district is still going strong. I’m sure there are plenty of others.
- “The 2004 law did nothing to reduce prostitution. ” The same amount of prostitution? More sex crime? Then, giving easier access prostitution would not do anything, would it?
- “The law also caused costs and prices to rise, preventing low-income johns from entering the marketplace” If you were to go for this type of stuff, might well go high class. The low-income class is always screwed (pun intended).
- “Block assess to sex without changing basic desires, and bad things happen. Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker ” Nobel Prize winner? I guarantee he has no idea about this topic.
Korean prostitution is different from western prostitution. Koreans do this to eat. They do it to feed their family members. Very different from western situation.
Spot on. Basic human motivation somehow confuses a lot of economists.
The Japanese army viewed the establishment of comfort stations as a measure whose goals included the prevention of rape of Asian women by Japanese troops – in other words, reducing the incidences of sexual crimes.
Hey, don’t ask me. I just finished reading “The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan,” by C. Sarah Soh. This is probably the most far-reaching publication on the issue of the wartime comfort women, and whatever one’s views on Japan’s war crime culpability, etc., Soh makes the case that it was as I wrote: the reduction of sex crimes by Japanese soldiers outside Japan.
By the way, The Korean, long time no see. Remember me? I’m “American Kim” who wrote a lot of emails to you back then. Hope you’ve been well.
Per #8, I also concur.
Apparently not everyone that juggles numbers very insightful.
“Korean prostitution is different from western prostitution. Koreans do this to eat. They do it to feed their family members. Very different from western situation.”
The apostle of The Cleanest Race has spoken!
We have an apologist on the other side too:
“How exactly are the black African and Arab slavers, who had been enslaving other black Africans for centuries before the Western Europeans showed up, any less culpable than those European late-comers to the crime?”
Korean prostitution is the result of US GIs, no offense. Look at all the red-light districts, all apparently are near these bases.
Um, #5, just want to say that the comic you linked to is bogus. Japanese using foreigners as comfort women is as serious as the Holocaust? Get real.
Somehow all Korean women are whores in the eyes of Westerners at the Hole except their Korean wives and girl friends.
slim,
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2012/09/22/on-the-subject-of-apology-when-is-it-enough/#comment-499929
#12 actually most of the red light districts are near train stations/bus stations-not places alot of GIs frequent. Now, make no mistake, many younger GIs do hang out in clubs where girls hook, but they aren’t Korean these days and haven’t been since the late 80s/early 90s.
@14: nah, just most.
Yeah, it is better than holocaust in a real sense:
cubuff, so Cheongnyangni 588, Yongsan Station, Mia-ri, etc aren’t near US bases?
slim,
Not only pure but also superior.
I sometimes think Koreans are the Supreme Race the Germans were dreaming about.
DaeHanMinGuk, baby. GangNam style all the way.
A Korean lady who used to work at prostitution created a movie ‘당신은 모르는 우리들의 이야기’. She tried to carry voices of Korean women who had been in the sex industry. She quoted statistics legalization of prostitution increases sexual crimes in Western countries.
http://media.daum.net/society/others/newsview?newsid=20120922032151454
I think it’s more that military bases are typically established near transportation hubs (in order to facilitate mobility) – whether the prostitution’s there because of the base, or because of its convenient location for getting in and getting out (so to speak) , I couldn’t say.
By the way, the Yongsan Station prostitution zone went bye-bye this year, as the property’s value for residential and commercial activity apparently finally outstripped its value for bone-dancing. The buildings, all of them, have already been razed.
@11
Please explain how my quoted comment constitutes an “apology” – by which I think you mean justification – of anything.
Only Yongsan station, and that served koreans. If you had ever taken a gander stroll with an obvious foreigner you would have noticed they wouldn’t even make eye contact let alone take in a western client.
Be interested to see the stats backing that up, particularly considering many western countries haven’t legalized it, since it was already legal, and probably one of the worst offenders the US it generally remains illegal.
Sperwer, its interesting that after numerous challenges to answer the question Q refuses to do so. So why bother, you know on this issue he’s just trolling.
Same with his whore comment he knows full well its shit and has nothing to back it up.
I’m really very curious about this difference Baduk, so what exactly is that western prostitutes do it for, is it a charitable act, or maybe they do it for fame and notoreity?
#25,
She took the example of Germany.
Arghaeri, that’s not true. You ever been to those red-light districts?
#23,
I meant apologetic.
#26,
Didn’t you read no.1 oppa’s comment?
Not true, so tell me then which US base is OhPalPal near to, and which is Miari near too.
Yongsan Station is near to Yongsan base, but served the rail station, the base was served by Itaewon.
Methinks you haven’t even been to Seoul!
And while your at it, can you tell me which base gangseogogeri is serving, or Insert Korean Town here, or the coffee delivery services, I presume they’re just sailing straight into the us bases on their scooters…
Q
Germany seems an odd example to choose, since whilst technically illegal it was commin, widely accepted and tolerated, and not just tolerated but regulated.
Accirdingly, it could be argued that any changes were not directly due to legalizing, but rather the accompanying dropping of regulation.
@30
Still no answer to the substantive question, though, eh Tonto?
I thought you abhor tu quoque. Et tu, sperwer?
So thats what the Q stands for, you Quoque.
What was ad hominem about it, tonto. It was just an insult. Meanwhile, you still haven’t answered the question. Too hard for you or just inconvenient for your simple-minded view of history and ethics?
When discussing about Western slavery, you brought up African and Arab slavery and seem trying to say both are culpable. Isn’t it tu quoque rhetoric you have been whining about?
Wow, changing the subject again; Boy, you really don’t want to answer the question do you?
Let me remind you what ad hominem means; it refers to resorting to a personal attack on a person in lieu of responding to the argument made by that person in discussion.
That btw is what you were doing in your #11, by falsely attributing a certain opinion to me and then implying that I’m morally suspect because of such opinion. I’m not whining about, though, since i find it amusing rather than insulting, because it just demonstrates your inability to come up with an honest reason for disputing my statement. I think it’s still important to point out, however, in the interests of honest discussion.
As for the substance, my remark is not an ad hominem, because i did not seek to undercut anyone’s argument by questioning their character or credibility. Instead, In response to a claim that, just as the Japanese allegedly were uniquely responsible and culpable for prostitution, Europeans allegedly were uniquely responaible and morally culpable for black slavery, how can one ignore the fact of the involvement and the apparent culpability of Arab and black slavers for the black slave trade both before and after the Europeans got involved in it?
I’m still waiting for your answer; but I’m not holding my breath.
Did I to you?
@ 12
which army base are all the korean hookers in australia catering too?
and the estimated 8000 korean hookers in l.a. claim to mostly service korean men, but im sure they are lying to protect the gis.
Yes, but the real issue is that you Still don’t want to answer, eh?
Fine w/ me.
The more you evade, the more you diminish your already unimaginably low reputation as an honest discussant.
RolyPoly’s arguement could be an answer, whether you agree or not, to your question. They are unique in their situations of prostitution/slavery as you also admitted.
Well, I do not know your hidden intention. Even though you deny, it could be interpreted as tu quoque question, so called 물타기.
On the other hands, my illustrating parallel examples of Western society as for Korean cases could be argued that they were presented as unique parallelism, not tu quoque.
Keep dancing. You’re not as good as Psy, but you’re more entertaining because unlike him you are a fraud.
Didn’t you just said “i did not seek to undercut anyone’s argument by questioning their character or credibility.” Now you contradict your statement. gbeverization…?
Baduk, didn’t make an argument, he merely made an entirely unsupported (and quite ridiculous) assertion. Hence his totlal lack of response to my question too him.
Since you think his “assertion” maybe correct, perhaps you can answer my question?
@47
You didn’t make an argument that could be undercut by an ad hominem. So you’re perfectly game for insults in my book.
Nor, again, have you answered my question.
Since he simply asked you a question, which you refuse to answer the facts, snd merely responded with an ad hominen attack the situation is clear for all to see.
sperwer, you also called me ‘kimchi’ before, by which you did “seek to undercut anyone’s argument by questioning their character or credibility.”
And which argument was that? Not that it mattered; you really don;t understand what ad hominem is and how it’s different from simple insult.
Why don’t you answer the question?
I answered at #43-45. If you seek further details that suit your flavor, do your own research in your abundant free time.
My question concerned the propriety of holding European uniquely culpably for black slavery when it’s a fact that other blacks and Arabs were deeply involved in the slave trade before and after the coming of the Europeans.
I see nothing in your palaver that responded to that. If there is, please point it out, as I don’t know how I otherwise could research your opinion?
If not, I think that I and everyone else with an interest can assume that you agree that they cannot be.
Since I don’t have the sort of free time that you, with all your transcribing of material into this blog, seem to, I’m going to leave it at that.
Yeah, basically both you and rolypoly admitted uniqueness/difference of each situation.
If I add a tail on snake’s body, I think slavery was not so much extensive and industrialized before Westerners arrive to African/Arab Continent. The same argument could be said for enforced military sex slaves, as supported by Toshiyuki Tanaka’s research presented.
Never mind #55. Racism also was a big motive in the slavery and enforced sexual slavery organized by Westerners and Japanese, respectively.
It must have been remarkably well hidden, I fir one could find no reference to slavery whatsoever, only Baduk stupid assertion that Korean whores do it for different reasons than western whores, about which both he and you have declined to answer what exactly the difference is between receiving korean money and western money.
Go figure, it wasn’t as industrialized 5,000 plus years ago.
I admitted no such thing. If you think otherwise, show where.
Supposing arguendo that your claims regarding the extent and “industrialization” of prostitution are true, how does this make any difference to the issue of the moral culpability of the participants in the slave trade? Is it “more wrong” because it was more extensive and commercialized? How was “racism” implicated in the enslavement by blacks of other blacks or by Arabs for that matter. Is there any evidence that Arabs’ treatment of blacks was based on a theory of race superiority? Notwithstanding that there was, in fact, some racist discourse about Koreans in Japan during the period in question, is there any specific evidence that such discourse influenced Japanese policy regarding the recruitment of women for the “comfort” corps? How does one reconcile such influence, if indeed any existed, with the recruitment of Japanese women for the same service?
As for racism of the enforced military sex slave, read Toshiyuki Tanaka’s “Japan’s Comfort Women (Asia’s Transformations)”:
“Why were comfort women almost invariably from Taiwan, China, or various places in Southeast Asia, and above all Korea? This might seem odd at first, given that the Japanese were notorious for their racism towards the people of other Asian countries. However, racial prejudice provides part of the answer to the question – that very racism helped make these women suitable for the role of comfort women. Japanese prostitutes did serve the military abroad during the war, but most were in a different position from the comfort women. The Japanese prostitutes mainly worked in comfort stations that served high-ranking officers, and they experienced better conditions than the Asian comfort women. Apart from the difficulty in recruiting Japanese women into comfort stations, Japanese military leaders did not believe Japanese women should be in that role. Their mission was to bear and bring up good Japanese children, who would grow up to be loyal subjects of the Emperor rather than being the means for men to satisfy their sexual urges. The Japanese wartime government took its lead from Nazi eugenic ideology and policy in these matters. In 1940 the National Eugenic Law was proclaimed. The purposes of the law were to prevent miscegenation and the reproduction of the “unfit,” such as those with mental illness that was believed to be inherited.
According to widely held Japanese views at the time, a supreme virtue for a woman was to serve her husband from the time of her marriage until the end of her life. During the war, the Ministry of Health actually recommended that war widows remain loyal to their deceased husbands by not marrying, unless they were less than 36 years old. In 1943, when Professor Kaneko Takanosuke from the Tokyo College of Commerce argued in a popular woman’s magazine, Fujin Koron, that all war widows should be encouraged to remarry, the military authorities demanded that the published issue a public apology. In addition, the government-regulated distribution of paper to this published was considerably reduced for the rest of the war period. So hypocritical was the Japanese military leaders’ attitude that on the on hand they strongly demanded that Japanese women be chaste, while on the other they did not hesitate to preside over the extreme sexual exploitation of other Asian women.
Korean and Taiwanese women were particularly targeted as sourced of comfort women, only because of the political and economic environment of these countries as Japan’s colonies in which young women were easily procures, but also in light of their cultural proximity to Japan. Japanese language was compulsory in Korea and Taiwan, and people in these countries were heavily indoctrinated in loyalty to the Emperor and respect for Japan as their suzerain state. Physical similarity between Japanese and Korean or Taiwanese also may have been a factor favoring procurement of women there.
In this was, Japanese forces exploited large number of Asian women under the excuse of preventing rape and VD. It must be concluded, however, that provision of comfort women did not function as an effective measure for either problem, and in particular for the problem of random sexual violence against civilians in occupied territories. Despite such official justifications for the program, it should not be forgotten that the women involved in the comfort women system were themselves victims of systematic, institutional rape and sexual slavery.”
Come on Q two simple questions, stop the avoidence and answer them.
옛다:
http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/people-involved/enslaved-people/enslaved-africans/africa-slavery/
Apology for slavery:
“You know we didn’t mean to and that it was for the economy but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. We’re sorry. It’s bullshit. You know it’s bullshit that white people haven’t gotten there but every other race has! And I am sorry ok?”
Q, just out of curiosity, is there a reason we’re talking about Japan here?
It started from rape crime, the topic of this post, which led to rape crime of enforced sex slavery of Japan and slavery in general.
Q is commenting, do you really need anymore explanation than that
Argh:
Quoque:
Well that’s Sperwers question answered, you fully support that slavery us wrong, but that westerners are not the only ones ulpable, arabs and africans are culpable too.
All that pissing about, and character assasination, just to end up agreeing with him. LOL
So now back on topic, the second question, since you have supported Baduk’s position, what exactly is the difference
between a korean whores accepting money for sex and a western whores accepting money for sex, other than the implicit racist
overtones of Baduks assertion.
#70,
Did you not read this?:
“Slavery existed in Africa, but it was not the same type of slavery that the Europeans introduced. The European form was called chattel slavery. A chattel slave is a piece of property, with no rights. Slavery within Africa was different. A slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement. But eventually they or their children might become part of their master’s family and become free. This was unlike chattel slavery, in which enslaved Africans were slaves for life, as were their children and grandchildren.”
@63
Nice try, but there is no evidence in the passage you cite, just allegations unsubstantiated by any references at all.
@72 more codswallop; Thomas Jefferson and George Washington by all accounts treated their slaves exceptionally well, notwithstanding that they were chattel slaves. Moreover, all the available evidence shows that slaves everywhere were property without rights, although they may have enjoyed various privileges at the arbitrary discretion of their masters/owners, who sometimes even manumitted them – that was as true of the more legally formalized Western institutions of slavery as it was of other places where custom was more important than law (which could hardly be said to exist in the modern sense).
Reference:
- Matsunaga Ei, “Nippon no Yusei Seisaku: Nachisu Doitsu to no Hikaku”; and Yonemoto Shohei, “Yuseigaku: Nippon to Doitsu to no Hikaku” in Kanagawa University ed., Igaku to Senso (Ochanomizu Shobo, Tokyo, 1994) pp. 24-43, 137-154
- Wakakuwa Midori, Senso ga Tsukuru Josei-zo (Chikuma Shobd, Tokyo, 1995) pp. 66-67.
Now present reference that support your claims. Were American and European slave hunters, traders and owners humane like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington?
Q
Ah the old selective quoting, and lack of reading comprehension tactic. Good for you.
Now perhaps you’d like to read the bit you left out
Note the demand from Arabs part, thats the bit which indicates the culpability of the Arabs.
Note then the warfare and raids to get slaves and the kidnapping of individuals increased part, thats the bit which indicates the culpability of africans.
Yes thats right, those same sweet people you quoted were most happy to round up and corral orher humans then drive them to the nearest trading post (arabs) or west coast trade port (portuguese and later other euros and americans) and sell them as chattels just as soon as the price made it economically viable and worth their while.
There is bo market without both demand AND supply.
Wait? Prostitution is banned in Korea? Keep hearing how easy it is to get a hooker in Korea and those references are not from the 90′s either.
#75,
Aside from the difference of slavery systems between the African and the Western, the demand of ‘chattel slavery’ market was created by outsiders (European and Arabs), not Africans. Then could you still say that Africans are more culpable than Europeans and Arabs?
Still struggling with reading comprehension Quoque,
1) your own cited “evidence” indicates a difference in earlier time, but indicates rounding up “human cattle” for direct sale later, i.e. the old system (if it ever was that way, since you don’t cite any real authority) was by that time essentially defunct.
Reading fail 2) who ever said the Africans were more culpable.
As already noted without a seller there is no market, the Europeans and Arabs rarely went out and captured slaves themselves, so in order for the trade to exist there had to be an accessible and affordable supply, which was readily and ably provided by the africans themselves.
So again please note Sperwers comment, and perhaps finally answer the question put to you.
Still waiting for the answer to my question too:-
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