Poverty and gangs force Filipinas into sex trade

By Joe Joshi
June 2, 2003

Dongducheon - Shirley, a young Filipina, stands in front of the bar where she works in vampish boots and a skirt so short it leaves little to the imagination.

"Work," she says simply, a helpless smile spreading across her pretty face. "Work, that is why I came. In the Philippines there is no way to make money."

Prostitution is an old trade but not an honored one, so Shirley prefers not to give her family name. At age 21, she has a plenty of company in this U.S. military base town where bars have names like The Dungeon, DMZ, Sunshine, Papaya, Blackjack, Platinum and Olympia and young women loiter at every corner on the strip.

More than 99 percent of the bar girls are foreign, most of them from the Philippines. Others come from Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. All of them cater to the sex tourism boom in this town close to the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Lina, who is very popular among the soldiers who frequent the club where she dances, put Dongdecheon's lure simply: "One-zero-zero-zero," she said laughing, "instead of one-zero-zero" - indicating a chance to earn $1,000 a week instead of $100.

But the laughter can be short-lived, promised money illusionary and the human cost high. Scratch the surface in the bar area and a world of violence, xenophobia, disease and misery is revealed.

For the sex trade, the balance of supply and demand could scarcely be better. "The business of trafficking for sexual exploitation is booming," said Lee Bong-chol, who manages a neighborhood convenience store. "It is an industry now worth several billion dollars a year."

Some of the Filipinas come here without illusions, however reluctantly, that prostitution for a wealthier clientele is the only way to feed their families and fashion a future. Others come deluded, lured into thinking they will work as singers or barmaids, but are forced into unpayable debt and deprived of all freedom in the end.

Maria, a Filipina with so many curves, it made my head spin just looking at her, was waiting outside the nightclub for a soldier who had just paid a $200 bar fine for her. Maria told me she saw no alternative to her current work on the strip. Her parents are dead, killed in a car crash when she was 16 and still at school. She took a succession of odd jobs, but they were insufficient to support her 10-year-old sister. Hardship, dead ends, vague dreams of getting married and maybe finding happiness, brought her to this God-awful place.

She stops talking abruptly, saying she has to go, when the soldier comes out and puts his arm around her waist. Of the $200 bar fine, Maria will get about $33. The bar owner gets the rest.

Maria takes a wad of notes out of her bag and hands it to her bouncer who has a distant look, track suit, Adidas sneakers, gold chain and sleeves short enough to reveal the bulge of his muscles.

Lorna, 19, also from the Philippines, is standing outside a nearby strip club. Unlike Maria, she is in the second category of women, those deceived, trafficked and ultimately trapped. She came to South Korea believing she would marry a rich man. Her husband turned out to be a poor farmer.

Lorna says she was locked up 24 hours a day and escaped when she was allowed to see a doctor. She was recaptured by her broker and had her passport taken. She was then told she had been "sold" to the bar where she now works. She has no money, she says. Her gaze is vacant.

Some of the Filipinas at the clubs are undocumented workers, others have three-month tourist visas arranged by gangs that bring them under false promises. Their stories tend to resemble one another. The women may be teachers, farm laborers or unemployed, ages 18 to 30. Often they have one or two children to support. They receive false offers of temporary work and good earnings. Travel and visas are arranged for a large sum of money - the women's debt to the gangs that organize their transportation and work. After arrival, passports and any money are taken and the women are deposited in small guarded apartments. Then they are told what their real job is to be.

The average rate in brothels is $200, but no more than a tenth of that reaches the women's pocket. Their "owners" buy food and pay rent, and the debt becomes intractable. The women are terrorized because they are often unable to pay off the debts. And they are paralyzed, afraid to go to the police, terrified the gangs will do something bad to a member of their family back home if they try to escape.

The trade in women from the Philippines has spread throughout South Korea and is increasingly well organized. The gangs that dominate the business are slick, flexible and elusive. Everywhere, women are reluctant to testify because they are afraid.

If they are going to testify, these women need witness protection, often new passports and assurances they can remain in South Korea. But government authorities will not provide this. And the gang members are much more sophisticated than the police.

At age 21, Raquel graduated from college with a degree in business administration and left the home of her poor, widowed mother to come to South Korea and clean the houses of upper-call families.

For years she scrubbed the floors, washed dishes, hung laundry and baby-sat toddlers _ all the while cowering as employers called her stupid and sexually harassed her. Now she is a nightclub dancer.

"Many times I had to leave my job because of the sexual harassment," said Raquel who has no valid travel document or permission to work in South Korea. "I always had to eat after my employers did, on separate plates, as if I were a pet. In fact, I think pets have more privileges."

She has no pension plan, no social security, no health insurance, working practically in slavery. That's because South Korea remains in the dark ages when it comes to the treatment of foreign workers, particularly the undocumented ones. This is despite repeated efforts by activists to reform antiquated labor laws and President Roh Moo-hyun's promises to improve conditions for all workers.

One young Filipina outside a bar who refused to give her name, has a tattoo of a rose on her upper arm and a ravaged look in her bhig brown eyes. She seemed a waif broken before she could live.

She sells her body voluntarily. At least this is "voluntary" work in the sense that it is the only work that she has been able to find that allows her to make what she called a "reasonable living." She plans to stop working next year.

"I met an American GI here who is my stable boyfriend and he wants to marry me," she explained. "He understands why I have to do this. If things work out, I plan to go and live with him in America."

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