By Kwon Mee-yoo
More and more Koreans are buying or selling sex overseas in more diverse, bolder, and sophisticated ways, but the government has been negligent in taking action against them.
At a National Assembly interpellation session to audit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Monday, Hong Jung-wook of the ruling Grand National Party said that much evidence of the overseas sex trade is scattered on the Internet and some agencies are openly recruiting girls for prostitution.
For instance, a tourist agency posted schedules for sex tours — which included information about types and number of times of prostitution, and prices ranging from 1.2 million won to 2.2 million won — on online community websites.
Another website recruited Korean women to work as prostitutes abroad, with the ads claiming that women can earn up to 45 million won per month in New York.
Rep. Hong visited Southeast Asia, popular for sex trade among Korean men, and found that they were the main target of the prostitution businesses there.
He went to three Phnom Penh brothels that hire underage girls, and all of them were looking for Korean tourists. “One of them hired minors. It seems Koreans are travelling overseas to buy sex from minors,” he said.
The lawmaker also showed a campaign pamphlet designed to drive out the teen sex trade in Cambodia which was written in three languages — Cambodia, English and Korean. “Korean was the second foreign language in the campaign and that is very shameful,” Hong said.
Despite this rampant overseas sex trade involving Koreans, the government has been lax in cracking down. The government has confiscated passports of those who are caught buying sex and restricted the issuing of new passports since 2008. However, only 16 people were punished in 2008; 16 in 2009; and 38 in the first half of this year.
“The government needs to come up with stronger measures against those who trade in sex abroad, which could severely harm the national brand of Korea,” Hong said.
“The government could have cracked down on such websites mediating prostitution abroad, but they seem to have given up doing so.”
