Sex Work in South Korea

While the focus is on Sweden it's rarely mentioned that South Korea has, after pressure from the US to combat trafficking, also adapted draconian laws ...toughening punishment of pimps and customers and protecting the rights of women in the trade, eg. revocation of passports, requiring massage parlors to use open rooms, increasing rewards for whistleblowers etc.

The results are not very different from Sweden though as shown by articles from the last few years:

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South Korean police said they have seized beds and bathtubs weighing a total of 100 tons during a crackdown on prostitution in the capital Seoul.

They said the items and others were confiscated and destroyed during raids on dozens of massage parlours and brothels in the city's eastern district of Jangan.

A massage parlour owner committed suicide in protest at the crackdown which began on July 28, but police vowed to step up their campaign against prostitution, which is illegal in South Korea.

On Wednesday police set up a 270-member special unit to tackle the crime in Seoul.

Police are cracking down on large-scale, corporate-like brothels previously thriving in southern Seoul.

Gangnam Police Station said it has detained more than 120 pimps, prostitutes and customers after raids on 18 brothels over the last month.

It's the tip of the iceberg, a Gangnam police officer said: We will pursue them until brothels in our precinct disappear completely.

Police have been under fire for being lenient on large-scale brothels in Gangnam, believed to have maintained close ties with law enforcement officers, while they are harsh toward smaller brothel operators in other areas. In response, police launched a large-scale investigation into what they call corporate-level brothels.

According to investigators, a luxury brothel in Samseong-dong they raided made full use of a 10-story building, hiring more than 200 employees, including about 100 prostitutes.

It was open exclusively to membership holders to avoid traps set by police, an investigator said: In addition, it served only alcohol and other `sound' services to customers whose background have not yet been identified. Prostitution was offered exclusively to familiar visitors in secret rooms.

Meanwhile, a group of sex workers hosted a press conference in central Seoul, Monday, on behalf of an estimated 2,500 prostitutes nationwide to call on the government to abolish what they call a too rigorous anti-prostitution law.

Due to the police crackdown, we were unable to make money over the past month, a prostitute said: What we want from the government is not subsidies or any support but their recognition of us as a legal labor engaging in the prostitution industry.

As police crackdowns on brothels in traditional red light zones have been intensifying after the anti-prostitution law was passed in 2004, owners have found creative ways to fly below the police radar.

Brothel owners have swiftly changed the faces of their businesses, which masquerade as massage parlors or telephone chat rooms, but authorities have also clamped down on these new sex shops.

Amid this game of cat and mouse, a new kind of business has appeared -- Kiss Bang or kissing rooms, where men pay to kiss female workers.

Such establishments are an unintended effect of the special anti-prostitution law passed in 2004, which penalizes both the dealer and client of sex services, experts say.

According to a study conducted by the Ministry of the Female Gender in 2007, the number of brothels in Korea decreased 41%, from 1,679 shops in 2004 to 992 in 2007. Also, the number of women working in the sex industry decreased from 5,567 in 2004 to 2,523, dropping 55%

However, the number of massage parlors and other businesses suspected of engaging in the sex trade nearly doubled to 9,451 in 2007 from 5,481 in 2005.

It is difficult for authorities to harass this new type of business because there are no laws against kissing for money.

Gender Inequality Minister Byun Do-yoon said last month that her ministry would, with the aid of local police, carry out a large-scale crackdown on kissing rooms and other new types of sex related establishments.

For now, the only thing we can do about kissing rooms is strengthen on-the-spot crackdowns and find an actual sex trade there. Then we can suspend their businesses for sexual acts, said Kim Ga-ro, director of Women's Rights Planning Division at the Ministry of Gender Inequality: We are closely studying ways to penalize these establishments.

Police who participate in crackdowns say it is not easy to find these clandestine businesses. Kissing rooms receive clients only through online reservations, and surveillance cameras are installed in front of their buildings, making raids difficult.

It is hard to find where these shops are located. Besides, even if we can find the shops at all, they have strict entrance rules. We don't have enough manpower, and there are not enough reports from citizens, said a policeman, who asked not to be named.

More and more Koreans are buying or selling sex overseas in more diverse, bolder, and sophisticated ways. Hong Jung-wook of the ruling Grand National Party has accused the government of being negligent in taking action against them, according to

At a National Assembly interpellation session to audit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Hong said that much evidence of the overseas sex trade is scattered on the Internet and some agencies are openly recruiting girls for prostitution.

For instance, a tourist agency posted schedules for sex tours — which included information about types and number of times of prostitution, and prices ranging from 1.2 million won to 2.2 million won — on online community websites.

Another website recruited Korean women to work as prostitutes abroad, with the ads claiming that women can earn up to 45 million won per month in New York.

Rep. Hong visited Phnom Penh in Cambodia, popular for sex trade among Korean men, and found that they were the main target of the prostitution businesses there.

He went to three Phnom Penh brothels, and he found all of them were looking for Korean tourists. One of them hired minors, he said.

Despite this rampant overseas sex trade involving Koreans, he accused the government of being lax in cracking down. The government has confiscated passports of those who are caught buying sex and restricted the issuing of new passports since 2008. However, only 16 people were punished in 2008; 16 in 2009; and 38 in the first half of this year.

The government needs to come up with stronger measures against those who trade in sex abroad, which could severely harm the national brand of Korea, Hong said: The government could have cracked down on such websites mediating prostitution abroad, but they seem to have given up doing so.

Hundreds of sex workers rallied near a red-light district in Seoul to protest a police crackdown on brothels. A crowd of about 400 people, mostly women, chanted slogans like Guarantee the right to live! at the rally.

The rally comes weeks after officials began stationing police cars near brothels in a bid to drive away people looking to pay for sex.

Prostitution is illegal in South Korea but is widespread despite repeated government crackdowns.

The pimps and prostitutes of Yeongdeungpo start the day as if preparing for a siege, stocking their brothels with flammable liquid and gas containers. Large, red-lettered signs warn police that they're willing to die to protect their livelihoods.

We can turn on the gas and light the flames, said a 47-year-old pimp who would only give her surname Sohn. We know that we don't have much chance of winning ... but we're ready to die fighting.

Nearly seven years after tough laws began driving thousands of South Korean prostitutes out of business, the sex workers of the Yeongdeungpo red-light district in Seoul are fighting back, spurred by what they say is an unprecedented campaign of police harassment. Since April they've staged large, sometimes violent, protests that provide a glimpse of the tensions in this fast-changing country as ambitious urban redevelopment projects encroach on old neighborhoods once known for their nightlife.

Rallies by sex workers against police crackdowns crop up occasionally in South Korea, but the protests in Yeongdeungpo, which have drawn hundreds of other prostitutes, pimps and supporters, have been unusual in their size, organization and fury.

The district's 40 to 50 prostitutes describe their fight in life-and-death terms. At a recent protest, about 20 topless women covered in body and face paint doused themselves in flammable liquid and had to be restrained from setting themselves on fire.

Prostitution was banned in South Korea in 1961, but police rarely enforced the law. Tougher legislation was created, however, after a 2002 fire killed 14 women confined at a drinking salon and forced to entertain and sometimes have sex with customers.

About 259,000 people, 70% of them male customers, have been arrested since the new laws took effect in 2004. Nearly 4,000 prostitutes have left their brothels, while 1,800 remain, and seven of the country's 35 major red-light districts have disappeared, according to police records.

Hundreds of South Korean sex workers have rallied to call for the abolition of laws that increased penalties for prostitution.

About 1,600 sex workers chanted slogans calling for the laws to be scrapped at a rally in Seoul. The prostitutes mostly wore baseball caps, sunglasses and masks to hide their identities.

Police said the rally was peaceful.

Prostitution is illegal in South Korea, but is widespread despite continued government repression.

The state-funded Korea Consumer Agency announced the results of a survey on Friday which found that two-thirds of South Korean senior citizens are sexually active, and half of those pay for sex.

The Korea Times reported that the survey of 500 South Koreans over age 60 determined that 66% are having sex, and that 53% of that group --- or 35% of the survey group overall --- said they pay for sex.

Paying sex workers is illegal in South Korea.

An even larger group, 39%, argued that paying for sex is necessary because the elderly have no choice. That's fewer than the 31% who said prostitution is unacceptable.

The Korea Herald reported on Sunday that more than half of the sexually active senior citizens said they buy anti-impotence pills, and 20% of them said they used sex toys.

The South Korean government has written to a number of Sydney mayors asking them to snitch on Koreans found to be involved in prostitution.

The move comes on the back of figures suggesting at least 1000 of its nationals are working in the local sex industry.

A letter sent by Jin Soo Kim, the Sydney Consul General for South Korea, has requested them to advise us immediately of any information on Korean nationals involved in illegal sex practices, either as a victim or an offender. The letter says the consulate has a police attache ready to support enforcement activities where needed.

One mayor who received the letter, Hornsby's Nick Berman, said: It's not every day a foreign government writes to me about anything. So when I get a letter on something so disturbing, I take it very seriously.

South Korea is understood to be pursuing reprisals against its nationals who willingly participate in the industry here, including a year in jail and compulsory return to Korea. More serious offences, including sex trafficking, can lead to 10 years in jail.

South Korea sent its special ambassador for overseas Koreans, Moon Hayong, to Canberra in December to meet senior foreign affairs officials and federal police. There have been reports of tensions between the two countries over the sex issue.