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By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
A sudden rainfall drenched Jangan-dong in eastern Seoul Monday night. Hundreds of garish signboards that read ``massage club'' and ``Hyugaetel (`rest' hotel)'' that once decorated its night scene to allure customers, remained turned off. A few pedestrians and vehicles under dim streetlights created an eerie atmosphere.
Jangan-dong is one of the best-known red-light districts in Seoul. Numerous sex-seeking males once set foot there every night.
But the stream has been severely reduced since July 28 when the police began cracking down on the illegal business.
Since then, police have arrested six pimps and booked roughly 157 sex workers and customers. It has also confiscated hundreds of bathtubs, beds and even faucets installed at massage clubs and hyugaetels, about 100 tons in weight, to prevent them from resuming business. Twenty CCTVs will be installed around the street by November to monitor clandestine sex trading, according to the police.
At the height of the crackdown, a pimp identified as a Choi hung himself in his underground parking lot on Aug. 29. His will found at the scene condemned the head of Dongdaemun Police Station who initiated the operation for the alleged undue crackdown.
``We are aware it's illegal. But there is no choice but to do this for a living at least for now. Please suspend the operation for a while and give us a chance to look for another job,'' Choi said in the will.
The death added fuel to the pimps' anger, leading them to take to streets Friday to protest against what they call the cleanup operation.
Despite the backlash, Lee Jung-goo, chief of the Dongdaemun Police Station, reaffirmed he would not ease up on the crackdown until his district is recognized as ``prostitution-free zone.''
``I will put all my energy into eradicating the red-light district during my term since it has become a hotbed of tax evasion and other heinous crimes,'' Lee said.
To the question over alleged undue suppression, he stressed ``It's an absurd claim. They ask us to guarantee their rights to live while perpetrating illegalities. It doesn't make sense.''
Pimps in the district said they did not oppose the action but found it too harsh. They said they want to sit at a negotiation table with the police to find a practical win-win solution.
``We are the same Korean citizens as other lay people. In this sense, at least, the police should guarantee our rights to live. But now the police are relentless,'' a pimp Cho Hyun-hee told The Korea Times. ``Prostitution is a necessary evil. If the comprehensive crackdown continues, the red-light district in question will disappear in the end as the police wish. Instead, I bet, the sex trade would evolve into other secret forms to dodge police search and even sneak into residential areas. It would create further problems.''
pss@koreatimes.co.kr
