But it has also made it more difficult for police to crack down on prostitution.
With fewer brothels, sex workers have turned to fronts such as coffee shops and
karaoke parlours. They rely more on technology such as the Internet to arrange
assignations with clients without the authorities being any the wiser.
"The new law turns us into criminals and forces us to go underground or abroad
where we have no protection of the law," said Lee, 26, who used an alias on an
Internet chat site for sex workers.
Striking Prostitutes
Lee was one of hundreds of sex workers who put on dark glasses, baseball hats
and surgical masks to conceal their identities in one of many strikes by
prostitutes in Korea over the past year.
South Korea is known for its protests and labour actions, but unions for sex
workers are new.
They have attracted the interest of thousands of sex workers and shut down
trade in some red light districts for a few hours, but have yet to effect any
real change in society, activists said.
The workers want their trade to be legalised, caps set on the number of hours
they can work a day as well as standards for working conditions. The best way
to accomplish these goals is to set up legal brothels that are highly
regulated, they said.
Prostitution is a lucrative industry in South Korea.
About 20 percent of adult males in South Korea bought sex four times a month on
average while 4.1 percent of women in their 20s made their livings as sex
workers, according to the most recent Korean Institute of Criminology survey
conducted in 2003.
It found that the sex trade, with Amsterdam-style windowed bordellos and fronts
in barber shops, raked in revenue of about 24 trillion won ($25 billion) a year
in the world's 11th largest economy.
In 2002, South Korean police arrested 3,500 people in the sex trade. But since
the crackdown was launched, some 16,951 prostitutes were arrested in 2004 and
18,508 in 2005, the Ministry on Gender Equality said.
The campaign has encouraged more than 1,200 people a year to enter a government
programme that offers a 7.6 million won ($8,000) grant for job training and
other expenses as well as a place at a halfway house to help them leave the
profession.
The programme also provides interest-free loans of up to 30 million won to help
former prostitutes start their own businesses.
"One day I looked at my reflection in the mirror and couldn't stop crying. I
realised I had to stop what I was doing," wrote one former prostitute who went
into the programme.
The women, who asked not to be identified, said in an interview via email with
Reuters that she now works as a beautician. She advised others to follow her
path.
"The government alone cannot stamp out the sex trade. But the government and
communities have to work together to help and save prostitutes," she said.
US Bound
Some prostitutes scoff at the government programme, saying it offers too little
money to help them pay off their debts or start businesses and too little
support once they are out, according to postings on Internet sites for the sex
workers' labour movement.
"The current government effort to rehabilitate sex workers is in fact driving
them underground, especially the majority who are held by debt to brothel
owners," said Choi Duk-hyo, a human rights activist.
The campaign against prostitution at home has forced many Korean sex workers to
pack up and head overseas, often to the United States where they accumulate
huge debts to their traffickers and face a harsh life.
In August, U.S. authorities broke up a Korean prostitution ring operating in
East Coast cites such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
Korean prostitution rings were also busted in California earlier this year.
"We are not a social evil," sex industry worker Lee said. "Most of the
customers at brothels are working-class people. It's not a place for fancy
parties."
Reuters. With additional reporting by Jang Sera and Jack Kim.
