Trapped in Modern Slavery:
Sex trafficking turns Russian women into Korean pawns
By Ben Jhoty, Staff reporter
Korea Herald
November 12, 2001Choice is something Olga, a young woman from Havaropsk in Russia's far east, clings to. Working as a dancer in a bar in Anjeong-ri, a red light area close to the U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, she says it was her choice to come here. Her choice to leave her boyfriend of four years, her family and her job selling electrical goods. And it is her choice she insists, whether she has sex with customers for money or not. Sadly however, circumstances in Korea's sex industry leave little room for such freedom.
Her manager has her passport. She cannot return home until her contract finishes. She must work from 5 p.m. till 2 a.m. seven nights a week, drinking juice while talking to customers and dancing in little more than her underwear once every hour. Living in a small apartment with seven other Russian women, she is given little money for food and must abide by a strict curfew, however, she says she is better off here than she would be back in Russia.
The girls - attractive, fair skinned young women hailing from Russia and former Soviet bloc countries - are but the visible face of an insidious trade that reduces women to little more than commodities and is driven by the realities of the global economy and the U.S. military presence in Asia.
Sex trafficking of women like Olga (the name she gives, although not her real name), has been on the rise in Korea since the late 1990s, when growing numbers of Russian women began to enter the country on E-6 visas reserved for entertainers and artists, ostensibly to work in bars and clubs.
While women from Russia and the CIS are the current "product" of choice in the Korean market, they work alongside women from the Philippines, Bolivia, Peru, Mongolia, China and Bangladesh, taking the place once occupied by Korean women in red light areas near the U.S. military bases in Pyeongtaek, Dongducheon and Gunsan. In Busan, meanwhile, clubs employing Russian women have proliferated in an area known as Texas Street.
Figures from the Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice illustrate the extent of the problem. The number of immigrants issued E-6 entertainment visas jumped to 7,044 last year, from 4,486 in 1999 and 2,150 in 1998. Of last year's total, 3,064 were Russian, 2,927 of them women. This, of course, doesn't take into account the huge number of women working illegally on C-3 tourist visas. According to a report by the Joongang Ilbo on April 24 this year, up to 6,000 Russian women entered Korea through Busan port and Gimpo airport between January 2000 and March this year.
'The Korean Dream'
The phenomenon has been dubbed the "Korean dream" by the Korean media, and while Olga and others like her claim to be happy, her story is laced with dark facts that no amount of shoulder shrugging or game smiles can mask.
Beautiful, statuesque and vivacious, she was recruited by one of the many companies in Havaropsk that advertise for entertainers to work throughout Asia. Only half joking, she says that probably half of the women in Havaropsk are working in countries across Asia and that the competition was so tough she was on a waiting list for two months before being deemed suitable. The company then organized her visa and paid for her flight here, after which a Korean agent decided she would work in Anjeong-ri.
Olga says she makes roughly $300 a month compared to under $100 back in Russia, where there are few opportunities, even for educated women. And so, if all goes well she will probably remain in Korea next year, after her contract finishes in May.
While Olga is frank about her circumstances and appears relatively sanguine, Kim Joo-young, secretary general of Saewoomtuh, a civic group that provides shelter and counseling to women involved in the sex trade around U.S. bases, says that though many women like Olga try to be positive about their circumstances, they are merely burying the shame and humiliation they feel. "They try to justify it, by saying 'I'm just an entertainer', but when they sell their body they feel awful," he said.
Living in oppressive conditions with little freedom, they must abide by a strict curfew, Kim says, and are prohibited from making contact with outsiders during non-working hours. It was this kind of detainment he says, that led to five foreign women dying in a fire in a Gunsan house last year. Sometimes packed into one room with six or more women, they often survive on little more than ramyeon and are forced to work, even when ill.
Saewoomtuh volunteer Teresa Oh, who through her counseling and support has won the confidence of many foreign women, is in a position to offer deeper insight into the anguish they feel. She says the women mentally condition themselves to cope with the physical demands imposed on them by drinking alcohol to drown the pain and shame and sometimes take drugs to help cope with the ordeal.
Oh, who usually contacts the women through a third party and strives to develop a rapport with them, said they feel stress, anger and frustration at the inhumane conditions inherent in their job.
The nightmare of prostitution
According to Oh, while some women such as Olga insist that it is their choice as to whether they sleep with customers or not, their circumstances leave them little alternative. "They have no choice except to work in prostitution, because they have to earn money to repay their debt to the trafficker, which can range from $3,000 to $30,000, depending on where they come from," she said.
Kim Joo-young agrees. "They have two sentiments in conflict: 'I want to escape the situation but I came here to make money and I have to support my family,'" he said.
According to a report by Saewoomtuh titled "The Reality of Prostituted Women in South Korea," women must sit by customers and drink more than 200 glasses of juice per month. If they fail to meet the quota, as most do, they have to "sell tickets" also known as "bar fine," meaning prostitution.
The cost of the bar fine depends on the time, amounting to U.S. $300 in the early evening and U.S. $150-$200 in the late evening. Korean customers have to pay 200,000-250,000 won. The women receive 30 percent, although the money is usually not paid to them directly but instead reduces the number of glasses they must drink. If the women fall short of the 200-glass quota they receive severe verbal abuse and often have part of their wages extorted, the report said.
In Pusan, the problem is even more acute, with large numbers of Russian women from Vladivostok and Havaropsk entering through the port. The Association for Foreign Workers' Human Rights in Pusan (FWR) compiled a report last year titled "Russian Migrant women in Entertainment sites in Pusan." The report found that women working in the Texas street area were isolated due to language barriers, and since many had overstayed on E-6 visas or were working illegally on C-3 visas, were unable to seek legal recourse for human rights violations. They also received no medical services or STD tests. Many also had their passports confiscated, had to abide by a strict curfew and were openly asked to engage in prostitution by club owners, the report said.
Is there a way out?
Naturally, large numbers of women flee such circumstances. However, foreign sex workers have few avenues for assistance. "They feel completely isolated because they can't get help from their embassies," said Kim Joo-young. "They are here on E-6 visas for entertainment, so as soon as they escape from their clubs they become illegal aliens and are sent to an immigration detention center and deported."
The Russian embassy was asked for its position on the issue but declined to comment on the record.
Despite anti-prostitution laws that have been in place since 1961, crimes related to human trafficking have been on the increase in Korea and the country was rated in the third tier, comprising 23 countries in regard to human trafficking by the U.S State department earlier this year.
While the report titled "Trafficking in Persons" labeled Korea a country of origin and transit, it only briefly made reference to the country as a destination for human trafficking, saying that the government treated aliens as immigration law violators and subsequently deported them. The Korean government responded by saying it has made it a rule to treat these women leniently, returning them to their country of origin rather than punishing them. It also pointed out that those women should not be categorized as trafficking victims, since they voluntarily engaged in certain activities to make money.
According to Kim Joo-young, the State Department's rating was fair. "That the government argues that it was groundless is funny to me. I believe it was deserved," he said.
Teresa Oh, meanwhile, said that as the rating was based on Korea as a country of origin and transit, rather than destination, it was not accurate. In contrast to the justice ministry however, she believed that the women were victims of trafficking. "Because the contract is vague and deceitful ... they do not know they have been trafficked for the sex industry," she said. "Being trafficked for the sex industry means that women are denied their dignity and human rights as people, they are exploited for the financial gain of their brokers and are forced into situations of prostitution."
Both Oh and Kim called for the government to draw up legislation and develop strategies for prevention, protection, prosecution, reintegration and repatriation. Kim said Saewoomtuh and other civic groups are pushing for a revision of the Anti-Prostitution law, which would be inclusive of prohibiting sex trafficking in Korea.
The justice ministry as recently as this week announced that it is considering banning hotels ranked second class and below and hotels and restaurants outside special tourist zones and regions where U.S. troops are stationed, from hiring foreign entertainers. This measure however, would not have any effect on the red light areas around the U.S. bases.
In regard to the revision of the anti-prostitution law, an official from the women's policy bureau at the justice ministry said, "In the past, prostitutes were considered law breakers. However, this bill intends to view prostitutes as victims of organized crime and therefore protect them while being directed at the organizers." He continued that although various civic groups were pushing for the bill to go before the national assembly this year, it was unlikely.