Legalizing prostitution is not the answer

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Mon, October 2, 2023 | 06:13

Today`s Column

Legalizing prostitution is not the answer

Posted : 2012-10-08 16:55

Updated :

I am writing in response to “Registered Brothels Needed” which appeared in the Korea Times on Sept. 24.

It is a struggle to express my utter disdain and disgust with the comments made by Kim Kang-ja. Thankfully, she is no longer a police chief, but it is criminal for her to remain employed as a visiting professor at Hannam University to express such backwards views to the future generations of this country.

Make no mistake; Kim Kang-ja is advocating sexual exploitation. Legalizing prostitution would simply encourage the objectification of woman and their subjugation to the desires of men, implicitly saying it is an acceptable profession and making the government the biggest pimp on the block.

Is that the sort of message we want to send to our children or the type of country we should strive to create?

If Korea is to stand a chance at ending sex trafficking, people need to deepen their understanding of the end point of sex trafficking, which is prostitution. It is not sex work, but the result of some of the worst kinds of social injustice: sexual abuse in childhood, poverty, and gender inequality. Therefore, we must fashion remedies that address those conditions. Legalization is not the answer.

Kim Kang-ja demonstrates her complete lack of understanding of the issues when she attempts to group those seeking companionship with a rapist’s motives. Stating “men… are incapable of controlling their drives…,” and believing that their needs can be met through prostitution.

Lonely people and rapists shouldn’t be grouped together. Their root causes and motivations are completely different, and legalizing prostitution is not the answer for either of them. Moreover, it is absurd to link people with a distorted perception about sex and pedophilia, as they, too, are unrelated. Again, legalizing prostitution is not going to stop the pedophile. The fact that Kim Kang-ja believes it to be true is frighteningly ignorant and inexcusable.

As other countries have demonstrated, there are proven strategies that work to eliminate prostitution. Unfortunately, Korea has failed to implement any of them properly. Strategies like: eliminating advertising, educating clients, arresting and prosecuting clients, pimps, and club owners to the full extent of the law, creating affordable, accessible, widely available rehabilitation programs for prostitutes, and educating the public all work, so why ignore these proven methods?

In Sweden, when men are caught with prostitutes, their names are published on a shame list. No surprise, but prostitution has dramatically dropped there.

It can happen in Korea.

Rather than make prostitution legal and social injustice more tolerable, we must work to end it.

Steve Austin
Concerned resident of Seoul