Yonhap Feature) While brothels falter amid crackdown, sex trade reemerges

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- It's 11 o'clock on a Friday night as crowds wander
through lanes lined with street vendors, soju bars and karaoke clubs in Seoul's
Yongsan neighborhood. But an eerie silence takes hold on a back alley. The neon
lights are off, shops are closed, and few people enter the deserted backstreet.
Yongsan's notorious red light district is wedged between one of Seoul's main
express train stations and towering skyscrapers. Normally abuzz with sex workers,
their voices filling the alleys as they holler at potential clients, tonight
there is silence following intensive police crackdowns that have shut down the
brothels. For now.
Marking the fourth anniversary of a special anti-prostitution law passed in 2004,
police are renewing a zero-tolerance approach to try and tackle the sex industry
here. In another red light district in Jangan-dong, eastern Seoul, police
apprehended nearly 200 brothel owners and their clients, confiscating 150 tons of
contraband over the past two months, including beds, bath tubs and other
equipment.
Does this mean the end of South Korea's sex trade? Residents are not convinced.
"They haven't moved yet," says Yook Jong-sook, 51, a long-time real estate agent
in Jangan-dong, whose clients include scores of brothel owners and sex workers.
"None of them have put their shops or rooms up for rent. They'll come back out
when the streets are calm again."
Replacing an anti-prostitution law loosely legislated in 1961, the National
Assembly unanimously passed the Special Law on Sex Trade in 2004, which toughened
punishments for pimps and sex buyers, while helping sex workers find alternative
employment.
Experts say the new law specifically tackled the traditional Confucian notion,
long extant in Korea, that the sex trade is directly linked to women's
questionable moral and ethical base, instead promoting a more sober assessment of
the male dominated sex industry. The government nearly tripled its annual budget
to support the rehabilitation of sex workers to 17.4 billion won (US$15.3
million) in 2007, up from 6.8 billion won in 2004.
The recent eradication campaign is a major turnaround for South Korea, a country
that once boasted of its sex trade as a resource for increased tourism. Women who
engaged in the sex trade with foreign tourists, mostly from Japan, were given
tacit approval by authorities in the 1970s, in line with the nation's fervor for
economic growth.
Since 2004 the number of brothels and their clientele in South Korea's
traditional red light districts has dropped slightly, but experts agree the
numbers are only half of the picture.
As police squeezed traditional red light zones, brothel owners adopted new and
more subtle business models, masquerading their shops as massage parlors, rest
hotels, hair salons or telephone chat rooms.
"Brothels are being raided, but that's also created a balloon effect where the
sex trade reemerges elsewhere in a variety of new forms," said Shin Sang-sook, a
researcher at Seoul National University's Institute for Gender Research, in a
recent forum ahead of the fourth anniversary of the legislation.
"The roots of [Korea's] sex trade are tremendously deep, and there is strong
resistance beneath the surface against the changes," she said.
According to police data, the number of sex shops operating in well-known red
light districts across the country was 995 in 2007, down 10 percent from 2006.
The number of sex workers also decreased to 2,508, from 2,663 in 2006.
However, the number of massage parlors, rest hotels and other dubious facilities
engaging in the sex trade nearly doubled to 9,451 across the country in 2007,
compared to 5,481 in 2005.
Skeptics say that by imposing harsher punishments on traditional red light
districts, the new law has in fact led to these new kinds of sex related
establishments that are more difficult to spot. They add that many of these
revamped brothels have moved into residential areas to avoid police patrol.
The eradication law may have broken the customary route of the sex market, but it
hasn't go as far as tackling the entire industry.
"Some may leave the sex trade, but others will continue it through different
means that are more organized and surreptitious, because their profits will
increase in proportion to the increased risks," wrote Lee Joo-seon, a researcher
at the private Korea Economic Research Institute, in a 2006 report titled "Sex
Trade Law: An Economic Perspective."
Still, many agree the revised law has improved the overall lives of sex workers,
providing free employment training and medical checkups, as well as legal service
to clear debts owed to pimps, a major reason many remain tied to the business.
"Its gotten better for the girls," a woman who works at a small restaurant
attached to the Yongsan sex district said, asking she be identified only by her
family name, Choi.
"They couldn't take a day off, they were not allowed to visit their mothers even
when they were ill or undergoing surgery. Debts silently piled up. Now, in a way,
they have some freedom," Choi said.