Sex Among Allies - but not

Sex by the Ally 

Korea's focus on the evil of USFK prostitution but

 not in broader Korean society

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*  Anti-USFK civic groups have been very successful in using prostitution as a tool to promote negative attitudes about US bases and soldiers among average Koreans.

*  The Korean government and press aids and abets this tactic as well as university education.

Sex Work in South Korea

Even though prostitution is illegal and punishable by law, police stations right next to red-light districts are clear evidence of the reality. Society sees prostitution as an unavoidable 'necessary evil'.

*  They are so successful, they have won over the US press and Congress.

*  All of them too often forget to look at the culture of prostitution in Korean society as a whole. 

*  Try searching on google for information about prostitution in Korea, and see if you can find an article that deals with both USFK and general Korean society's prostitution culture.... 

Articles that can't seem to note the situation of prostitution in greater Korean society are unforgivable, because the sex industry in Korea is so damn big:

Korea's sex industry is major money earner 

Korea's sex industry generated $22 billion in profits last year and employed about 260,000 women, including foreigners, a recent government survey found.   

The profits from the sex industry made up 5 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product last year, making it larger than the agricultural and fisheries industry .

According to reports by women's groups and the Korea Women's Development Institute, the scale of the Korean sex industry is far larger than the ministry is admitting.   (Korea Times 02.06.03)

Wow!

From the World Sex Site

There is an area on the outskirts of Seoul where women sit in glass windows a la Amsterdam.  I have never been there, but have been told that they generally do *not* service foreigners there, that this is only for Korean men

If you spend a year or more in Korean society, another thing that will strike you is - the sheer variety of places where sex is for sale.

Demand seen fueling expansion, evolution of Korea's sex industry

A recent Korean Institute of Criminology survey on the local sex trade found that only 7.5 percent of the money generated by the sex industry came from "traditional prostitution," or brothels. Most of the money for sex was spent at entertainment spots like karaokes, taverns, massage parlors, cafes, barbershops and hostess clubs, or "room salons."  (Joongang Daily date misplaced)

If you have not been to Korea before, get the images from the Vietnam War movies of the 1980s out of your head.

The sex industry in Korea is not extremely filthy with packs of whores in the street saying “Me love you long time” as you walk by.  In the red light districts, you will have them out in the street drumming up business, but overall, it is an orderly, well established, and widespread industry easily locatable in cities large or small, but you would miss most of it if you did not have a Korean to explain to you what happens in a “room salon.”

However, I should start off by saying I am a prude.  I am Christian, and I think prostitution is morally wrong.  I do not like it if US soldiers, or anybody, frequents prostitutes.  It is a crime in the US and in Korea. 

In the shadow of Korea's social and economic development, the camp town remains an outcast community. Prostitution involved coercion and extortion, and the human rights of women were sacrificed for money. Higher crime rates were taken for granted.

Prostitution, used by the Japanese imperial army to boost its soldiers' morale, is the worst inhumanityKorea Herald editorial 08.12.03

The mention of the Japanese is classic.  It is the only thing about Japan in the whole editorial and comes as the closing sentence - putting the "sex slavery" of one "colonial power" with that of the contemporary one - America!

But ----- it makes absolutely no sense to hold US soldiers up to a standard of morality and justice Koreans do not apply to themselves.  I can never understand when a Korean man or woman uses prostitution as a reason why they “don’t like” GIs or how the Korean press can come out with articles a few times of year bemoaning Camp Town Prostitution, and it makes me angry when I witness US Congressmen or American news outlets, who obviously do not have enough information about the culture of prostitution in Korean society, give a great boost to the anti-US groups in Korea when they jump on the Camp Town bandwagon.

According to a JoongAng Ilbo survey, 20 percent of men between the ages of 20 and 64 bought sex about once a week.

My adult students generally said 80% of men use prostitutes either for their own pleasure or as part of a group - like co-workers or former classmates and other "circles".  Korea is a very group oriented society.  Co-workers or groups of friends go out regularly - including married men and those with kids.  It is a big difference between Korean and  American society.  There are many positive as well as negative aspects to it.  

Goyang launches wide attack on advertising by 'love hotels'

The targets of the crackdown include night clubs, bars and karaoke rooms, many of which are fronts for prostitution. One city hall official said many of the businesses serve and employ minors and distribute obscene leaflets.

The roads adjacent to the hotels are full of cars with billboards glowing with bluish neon lights and pictures of partially-unclothed women promoting clubs or massage services, which are, in most cases, fronts for prostitution.  A seemingly endless stream of cars can be seen pulling up to the hotels day and night. Leaflets advertising the same massage services and clubs are found every morning under the windshield wipers of cars parked in the neighborhood, which teems in the morning with children on their way to school.  (08.29.02)

Below are paragraphs taken with permission from a quality site by a long time Korea resident in Kunsan who covers many national issues but especially focuses on Kunsan airbase.  My comments will be in this shade of blue and block quoted.  For the full version of how the author of the Kunsan site views the utter hypocrisy of Korea's view of Camp Town Prostitution, see this site.

Prostitution & A-Town

Though the base will never admit it, A-town was an essential evil in the 1970-1980s (due to the remote location and poverty in Korea). A-town was strictly for the use of GIs -- and the "sailor bars" and brothels near the Kunsan train station were off-limits.

Populated with "tourist clubs" that restricted Korean nationals, A-town was the only place the personnel of Kunsan AB could blow off steam. By and large, it was simply a place to get drunk and raise hell with your comrades. However, there were scandals. In the days of the hondal space heaters, there were a few officers and airmen found asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in the rooms of prostitutes. There was the case of serial murders in 1978 by a GI. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in a Chonju Prison.

I have found articles from the news archives of crimes by GIs being handled in Korean criminal court going back to 1967!!  To see this research - go here.  But, Koreans will tell you routinely that no US soldiers are tried by Korean law.  I have had trouble getting ordinarily, fair, and bright minded adult students to believe me even when I brought in newspaper clippings to show them.  It became even more frustrating when several long term students would be in my classes for 6 months to a year, and we would witness more than 1 GI criminal case come and go in the Korean press, but even after the first happened, and it was clear the GIs were found guilty in a Korean court, when the 2nd case came, they would say yet again, "GIs are never brought to justice in Korea, they just fly away home, and there is nothing Korea can do about it."  It is etched in Korean root memory.

The town itself was a filthy, sleazy bar row with stinking toilets and surrounded by rows of one room shanties that housed the prostitutes working in the bars. "VD cards" were essential for all who worked in A-town bars. A-town was surrounded by rice fields still fertilized by human waste and the stench was over-powering in summer. 

However, by the 1990s, the trickle of wealth from the miracle of the Han started to enter Kunsan. The first of the high-rise apartments were built and industry moved into the Kunjang Industrial area. With this new affluence, A-town started to change.

By the mid-1990s, Kunsan exploded into a bustling city of 350,000 people. High-rise apartments in Naundong and "room salons" and bars were being built everywhere.  Affluence was apparent. A-town had changed too. The bars were "upgraded" and the streets paved. However, the poorer Korean clientele started to appear in the bars of A-town creating a problem because of their clashes with GIs. A whole new set of rules had to be applied to the changing times.

Though there were many hassles with being a GI bar area, the tax advantage from being a "tourist-club" allowed bar owners to purchase of beer at advantageous rates and have a tax advantage not available to other bars. This is a hold-over from the days when these special areas were constructed strictly for the GIs of Kunsan in the 1970s. The interiors of the bars were upgraded, but A-town still remained a low-class bar area strictly for GIs.

For further perspective, you should know that the Korean government under the former generals (1961 to at least 1979) also promoted "sex tourism" for Japanese businessmen to gain much needed foreign currency.

Until the mid-1990s, most women in the sex industry were Korean. But the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Philippine economy made foreign women readily available. At the same time, the booming South Korean economy was making jobs near the bases less desirable than they'd been in the hardscrabble days after the Korean War.  With affluence coming to Korea, the Korean girls found better employment at Korean clubs as the GIs weren't the "rich GI" from a few years before.

In 1996, the Korean Special Tourism Assn, a trade organization for clubs near the U.S. bases, began lobbying the government for the right to bring in foreign women to work in the nightclubs.  Thus Russian and Filipino "entertainers" were imported to fill the void. In 2001, the board approved applications for 6,980 entertainers, 98% of them women. The largest numbers came from the Philippines, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Moldova.

The following is a report reposted on the site noted above

Women from Philippines and former USSR Trafficked into South Korea for Sex

(September 2002)

Over 5,000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s, with the largest employers of Filipino women being bars located near US military bases, according to new research published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

by Dr June Lee, a former IOM Seoul Chief of Mission
(also from Kunsan O'Sullivan site)

When a brothel burned down in Kunsan City in 2002, ten women were burned alive because they were trapped inside by the bars and locked doors. There was a cover up attempt initially, but the truth came out with much sensationalism nationwide.

However, not a word was heard from the Korean Human Rights community.

It was later found out that the Police a block away so to say that they did not know about its existence is ludicrous. The whole affair was an embarrassing blemish on the police and Kunsan City's new image as an industrial center.

The whole situation was swept under the carpet. The point is that prostitution in Korea exists everywhere, but no one in polite frequented the brothel in order to buy their silence.

This is slick.  You have to pay attention.  The problem the editor of the Kunsan site and I have with this kind of "reporting" is how they work everything to slant against USFK while avoiding Korean society at large.  The book Sex Among Allies, by another Korean scholar, does the exact same thing.  

One question:  what about the Russian prostitutes?

Why don't you mention anywhere in your article establishments that cater to Koreans only?

But upon further search of the Korean English language archives, I found that more than a few news items on the foreign sex workers in Korea focus only on USFK, and some don’t mention USFK at all.  I provided an appendix to this review with links to articles on the issue of foreign prostitution and sex slaves I did not use on this page.  In later edits of this page, I will most likely use quotes from some of these articles….It should highlight that the studies and articles that talk about sex slaves and USFK bases without reference to greater Korean society are at minimum journalistically or academically dishonest.  It would not have passed in my English composition 101 courses at university.

In July 2001, the US State Department, in a report on trafficking in persons, classified South Korea as one of 23 countries that did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, under the terms of the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence  Protection Act.

The South Korean government meanwhile charged that the US report negatively portrayed Korea and was not based on adequate review of the country's situation. The Korean government, in rebuttal to the report, among others, pointed to several articles in its criminal law that heavily punished those involved in the sale of human beings for prostitution.

Here is the rub.  South Korea is obsessed with its “international image.”  They sue Jay Leno for making fun of eating dogs.  They condemn Leon in the National Assembly.  Meg Ryan went from loved to despised overnight for making a negative remark about "some Asian commercial" she made that happened to be for a Korean company.

They were very unhappy with the UN report.  And I believe much of this official blaming of USFK for foreign sex  workers by the Korean government and academic think tanks is a way to strike back at the US and yet again blame a foreigner for Korean social problems.

[The report continued] While efforts have been made to 'officially' abolish prostitution, such endeavors have not been successful.  According to the report, some observers have even suggested that 'an unwritten or de facto policy of the US military to "keep the men happy" has resulted in a sort of collusion with local businesses, local government, and military bases to support a camp town entertainment/prostitution industry.'

The US military police do not have jurisdiction off base.  It cannot round up prostitutes and owners, shut down businesses, or bar the doors.  The Korean government has the power to police its society.  It also has the power to issue visas to "foreign entertainers."  It has the power to deport immigrant prostitutes.  It has the power to shut down red light districts - where only Korean men go.  The US military has power over none of these things in Korean society.  

Against the backdrop of a sex industry in Korea that is becoming more diversified, foreign women have become an important source of labor to support this industry. The report notes that many of these women were not initially imported to provide sexual services to South Korean clients.

So how are you going to explain the "sex tours" to Thailand, the Philippines, and Russia that Korean men go on and are advertised in some travel agencies? This is the kind of "official" bullshit that helps fuel hatred of USFK in the average Korean. As Korea got richer, migrant workers were brought in to work the dangerous, difficult, and dirty jobs Koreans didn't want to do. They call these migrants, many from the same nations as the sex workers, 3-D workers.

It seems blatantly obvious the importation of sex workers is just one part of this trend in the Korean work force and part of the Korean man's taste for foreign women too.

The investigation about whether U.S. troops have participated in or given business to the human trafficking industry was requested by 13 members of Congress in 2002.

Seeing the US government and media pile on with the Korean anti-American civic groups almost makes me want to throw up my hands and give up...

The E-6 visas were issued by the Korean government -- not the USFK. Our problem is that they are shifting the blame for human trafficking -- with the aid of NGO activist groups -- to the USFK. All the reports point to KOREA as having a major problem with trafficking.

The demand for foreign female entertainers has more than doubled since South Korea's recovery from the Asian financial crisis of 1998.

Look closely at the fact that the increase came AFTER the "IMF Crisis" recovery.

The military income was static -- so what brought about the increase?

The Koreans started copying the Japanese taste for "round-eye sex" and the Russian decline into insolvency allowed the Koreans to go bargain hunting in the flesh market

(From the AP) U.S. military patrols in S. Korea often don't recognize instances of human trafficking 08.07.03

(lead sentence)  U.S. soldiers visiting brothels may have encouraged sex slavery in South Korea because of a lack of understanding about human trafficking, the Defense Department's inspector general concluded in a report.

An investigative reporter at WJW, a Fox affiliate, used a hidden camera to film U.S. military police patrolling bars and brothels in South Korea. Officers told the reporter that the women at the bars had been forced into prostitution and that they were patrolling the establishments at their commanding officers' request to intervene if soldiers got into trouble.

"There's been a learning curve and a sense of disbelief, that somehow these women were prostitutes by their own volition" instead of being coerced into prostitution, (US Congressman) Smith said. "They're sold just like slaves were years ago in this country."

This is true to a significant extent.  But the Russian prostitutes I saw milling around Kyongbok Palace and other tourist sites in Seoul and elsewhere were clearly not being forced to stay in Korea against their will.  Some of the articles I posted in the appendix also show that some of the women come to Korea knowing about the prostitution role they will play, but come anyway because Korea offers more money than they could make in jobs in their nations and Korea offers much easier visas.  But I can guarantee you none of these women came knowing they would be cheated and abused by their Korean owners - whether they knew they would be prostitutes or not. 

My Korean wife also scolds me whenever she catches me applying common thoughts about prostitution in the US to Korea - where it is more like

what you find in parts of Japanese society --- where some significant numbers of the prostitutes are young native women who can't find a job in the male dominated labor market and those who want "pocket money" to buy Guichi.

Koreans are Hypocrites on Prostitution. Unfortunately, for the U.S. military to try to take a moral stance on prostitution in Korea is a bit nonsensical.

In Kunsan, the red-light district of Kunsan has existed for over 50 years in the same location near the railroad station and open market.

The low-class bars and brothels are in this area. This is the reason that the area is off-limits [to USFK members] during the night time hours. Sex for sale is found in many coffee shops and barbershops. "Love" motels and room salons are everywhere.

Kunsan is no different from any mid-sized town in Korea. In larger cities, usually the sex trade centers are near large train stations. For example in Seoul, the Yongdongpo area near the train station has a bustling red-light district with Dutch style establishments with prostitutes sitting in the windows.

The exposes in Korea of foreign "entertainers" (Filipino and Russian) being "forced into prostitution" by unscrupulous gangster bar owners has created a furor in Korea. Though the shocking abuses were at establishments with strictly KOREAN clientele in Seoul and Pusan -- the U.S.< military was linked to them in the media.

Another example of the US press piling on is an LA Times story of the prostitution and sex slavery near another US base.

With names like America, Vegas, Seattle, New York and USA, the clubs are geared to lonely and homesick GIs out for a night on the town. Many have signs outside saying they're for foreigners only — meaning no Koreans — and some won't admit anyone without a U.S. military ID.

This is the after-hours playground for troops stationed just 12 miles from the demilitarized zone that borders Communist North Korea. The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea, on a mission that is most frequently described as defending democracy. But life is anything but democratic for the women — mostly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union — who work in the nightclubs.

In a diary being used in a civil lawsuit about to be filed by Mallari and 10 other Filipinas against the Double Deuce management, the 22-year-old wrote about how she and the others were locked in their rooms above the nightclub, their passports and travel documents taken away. They weren't permitted to make phone calls.

They were threatened with a knife. They didn't get a regular day off. They were given less than $10 a week for food, leaving them with nothing to eat but rice, noodles and an occasional can of Spam.

Inside the USA club — which promotes its Americana theme with a logo of the Statue of Liberty — the lights are dim and the music loud. A couple of soldiers in civilian attire hunch over beers at the bar, chatting casually with a Russian woman. But there appears to be more intimacy at a private banquet tucked in a dark corner. The scene is raunchier in the town of Songtan, where the U.S. Air Force's Osan Air Base is located.

At the Playboy Club outside the base, a Philippine dancer in a black bikini writhes around a floor-to-ceiling pole on the stage. Video monitors replicate her image around the room. Under a bank of monitors, a Filipina wearing just a thong and bra straddles the lap of a soldier who is fondling her buttocks, while his buddies drink beer and laugh.

Great imagery.  I just can't figure out why these reporters can't locate the places where Korean men are the only customers

I would also like to point out something else - that is vital for people to remember when reading a "news" story like this - one that uses eloquent, sophisticated prose and fiction-quality imagers:  You must remember to take your mind out of the text from time to time as well - meaning - 

I am from Georgia, and Atlanta is famous for strip clubs.  Again, I have never been to one. 

 I'm a Christian, and I find the idea of lap-dancing distasteful, but they do it legally and for a lot of money in Atlanta.   

If I were the kind of Christian that wanted to influence the majority of people to follow my moral tendencies, I could write one hell of a description of lap dancing that goes on in Atlanta (and the prostitution too), but it wouldn’t change the fact that lap dancing is legal and generally accepted. 

And the point to remember in Korea is that prostitution (while illegal just as it is in Atlanta) is about as common and accepted  as lap dances are in a US strip club.  I mean, for Pete’s sake, you can be offered it at a male barbershop!  That is why my students back in the mid-1990s when I arrived in Korea told me to never go to a male shop to get my hair cut.  It took a couple of months before a student got to know me well enough to explain why I should avoid them!!

The imagery of the shady bars and prostitution places (and linking it covertly with the idea that all of the foreign women the reporter saw are sex slaves) in the LA Times story adds great effect to the idea of how the US military causes sex slavery in Korea, but it doesn't make it so
.

Nobody in the South Korean government will publicly confirm Kim's account. But one bureaucrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believes that many Koreans thought it better that foreign women, rather than Koreans, entertain U.S. service members.

Superintendent Kim has made several recent forays into Tongduchon — not to investigate whether prostitution was taking place but to inspect the living conditions in the clubs.

On one excursion last month, she traipsed through bedrooms and opened refrigerator doors as a nightclub manager, a middle-aged woman, screamed in indignation.

"When I visited this place the last time, there were bars on the windows and nothing but old porridge in the refrigerator," Kim said, noting with satisfaction that the clubs are cleaning up their act under increased scrutiny. “Now there is food and soda in the refrigerator. The bars are off the windows. It's much cleaner." The police are distributing stickers in the nightclubs informing women of their legal rights and giving out the number of a police hotline.

The Philippine Embassy is skeptical about whether the measures will be effective. Many women are reluctant to call the police for fear that they, not the owners, will be the ones arrested.

Even in the case of the Double Deuce nightclub, police initially planned to charge Mallari and the other women with prostitution. After being dissuaded by the Philippine Embassy, the women were simply deported.

With growing affluence in the Korean populace, there are numerous cases of the complaints by the foreign prostitutes in the major cities as night clubs seek to employ primarily Russian women as prostitutes for their high-spending Korean clientele.

The problems encountered by unpaid wages and abuse forced some to seek the help of Korean authorities to remedy the situation. The Seoul Times ran an article in March about Russian prostitutes seeking aid in Pusan from the Police.

We are NOT saying that the USFK soldiers/airmen have not engaged in illicit sexual acts. Assuredly they have.

Soldiers have engaged in such sexual behavior for as long as military forces have been in existence -- dating back to the Roman legions with their "camp followers" and probably long before that. We are neither condemning nor are we supporting such acts.

For the USFK to become involved in trying to enforce morality is futile -- if not ludicrous -- in a society that openly allows a double standard on sex-for-sale to exist so openly and blatantly.

Equality Now, a feminist activist group, claimed in Equality Now: Women's Action 23.1 June 2003, "Despite the fact that under the U.S. Forces, Korea (USFK) Regulation "all houses of prostitution" are formally "off-limits" to military personnel in South Korea, U.S. military commanders in South Korea condone and support the commercial sex industry by assigning Courtesy Patrol officers to the bars to facilitate safe access to prostitution for U.S. servicemen. After the report, the USFK issued a statement reporting their assessment as "most establishments were disco-type dancing clubs providing a safe, clean environment," further proclaiming that the purpose of Courtesy Patrols is "to deter acts of violence, to enforce curfews, and when applicable, prevent USFK personnel access to off-limits establishments."

We disagree with Equality Now on focusing their attention ONLY on the USFK. It is obvious that the agenda is "political" and if you track as it does not admit the existence of the more prevalent -- and blatant -- Korean sex trade. They targeted the USFK because it was a "soft target" that could result in action if public attention was brought to bear on them. (NOTE: Go to Equality Now: Actions Sorted By Country and you will notice the pattern in "targets.") Equality Now has equivalent "sister" NGO Korean activist groups that protest this human trafficking, but target only the USFK making them easy to spot as having a political agenda rather than a humanitarian one.

At the same time, these feminist groups focus on the U.S. military saying that the soldiers are NEVER arrested for their role in prostitution, the groups fail to mention that Koreans are NEVER arrested for solicitation of prostitution blatantly visible in every Korean night club -- though prostitution is against the law in Korea. Sex-for-sale is not hidden in Korea.

It is out in broad daylight for all to see -- coffee shops with girls on scooters; barbershops with dual-rotating poles; room salons; love motels; and the list goes on and on. From the highest levels to the lowest strata, sex-for-sale is blatant and open.

........(End of O'Sullivan site quotes)

So this is the situation in Korean society the United States in Korea faces.  

Please note well the type of "justice" South Korea demands for GIs.

We just went over thoroughly how many Koreans are often unimaginably hypocritical when it comes to standards on prostitution - they have one set of ideas on prostitution when it relates to USFK and another when it comes to Korean men.

These are the facts:    

*  American soldiers who commit serious crimes (and many minor ones) ARE arrested by the Korean police.

*  They are given back to USFK until the trial is over and sentence passed (but this has recently changed.  Under some major crimes, US soldiers are turned over before the trial begins.  I have no idea how the system of “bail” works in Korean society.  I’ve never read it brought up in these discussions.)

*  They DO stand trial in Korean criminal court (Korean soldiers are NEVER tried in a civilian criminal court).

*  GIs ARE found guilty by Korean judges.  (I've never found a case where a GI was found not guilty, but prosecutors in the US have a very high conviction rate too - you shouldn't go to trail if you don't think you can win.)

*  They DO go to jail in Korean prison ---- in wings of the Korean prison set up for foreigners and GIs.  If Koreans cannot "endure" (a favorite Korean word) the fact that the prosecution can’t appeal an innocent verdict as they can for Koreans, or if they can't handle special wings in their prisons for foreigners....

....or they can't stand not having the ability to put US soldiers in jail for "crimes" they do not send Koreans to prison for committing.....

Then they have the power to demand USFK leave.  Vote!!!  It is within their power.

But they don't want to.  They enjoy the process of ranting at US soldiers and the US government.  They have created the double standard of demanding stronger "justice" against US soldiers so they can justify their "righteous rage".

So far in these newsletters, I've covered this factor in Korean anti-Americanism in several issues:

The
Infamous 2000 Dumping Case --  The Tank Vehicle Accident and Traffic Accidents in Korea and
The
Verdict Reaction -- And now this prostitution review.

They all involved much of the same cultural tendencies.