- GENEVA - In an effort to
keep US soldiers happy, more than 5,000 women, mostly from the Philippines
and Russia, are used as "comfort women" in a prostitution network
in South Korea, a United Nations agency reported on Tuesday.
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- "The plight of trafficked women in South Korea is
quite serious," said the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) in a study released on Tuesday at its headquarters in Geneva.
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- The first concerns about the trafficking of women emerged
in South Korea in the mid-1990s, when reports began to circulate that there
were many foreign women, particularly from the Philippines, working in
the bars near the US military bases. The reports called to mind Japan's
use of "comfort women", mostly Koreans, for its soldiers' entertainment
from 1910-45.
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- The bars located near the US military bases are the leading
employers of Filipinas, whom the traffickers apparently prefer for their
English-speaking skills, and who are admitted into South Korea with E-6
visas, also known as entertainment visas.
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- According to the IOM report, these "foreign entertainers"
are brought to South Korea because they are considered "essential
to the survival of the military camp town businesses, which have been suffering
from a declining supply of South Korean women".
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- In 1999, there were an estimated 1,000 Filipinas working
in the US military base areas, according to the Overseas Workers Administration
of the Philippine government. The women were young, some under age 20,
and the majority came from the central Philippine region of Luzon, and
the Pinatubo area in particular.
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- The report's author, June Lee, former chief of the IOM
mission in Seoul, said the most conservative estimates indicate that hundreds
of women arrive in South Korea each month, brought by human traffickers
to be used in the local sex industry.
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- "Those who bring these women to South Korea appear
to have a good working knowledge of the immigration regulations of all
the countries involved," she noted.
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- Lee said it is the responsibility of the government's
criminal investigators to determine whether major crime rings are behind
this phenomenon.
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- However, the report found that a South Korean organization
is the chief contractor for holders of the E-6 visa. The organization,
the Korea Special Tourism Association, is "approved and regulated
by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism", according to the document.
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- The association consists of 189 owners of clubs that
operate near the various US military camps throughout South Korea.
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- Given these facts, "clearly there is some linkage"
between the trafficking of women and the presence of US troops, said Christopher
Lom, spokesman for the IOM, which is dedicated to ensuring the rights of
migrants and working with governments to develop humane responses to the
challenges posed by human migration.
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- After Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, South Korea
was liberated from Japanese domination, but was occupied by US forces until
1948. Washington sent forces again in 1950 for the Korean War, and they
have maintained a presence ever since.
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- The IOM report states that some observers have suggested
that there was an unwritten or "de facto" policy of the US military
to "keep the men happy" with the presence of women near the bases.
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- The foreign women working in the sex industry in South
Korea "have been predominantly from the Philippines and Russia",
says Lee's study. But there are also women coming from Sri Lanka, Nepal,
and Indonesia, "though in very small numbers", and rarely, there
are women trafficked from Latin American countries, such as Peru.
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- The Filipinas and Russian women alike are well educated,
and some - particularly the Russians - are university graduates, says the
IOM report.
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- The IOM urges the South Korean government to reach official
consensus "on Korean terminology to describe the trafficking of women
into situations where they are exploited as prostitutes or placed in low-paying
jobs by abusive employers".
-
- It also cites a report released by the US Department
of State in July 2001, which criticizes Seoul for its failure to take decisive
action "to combat this relatively new and worsening problem of trafficking
in persons".
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- (Inter Press Service)
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- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/DI05Dg01.html
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