By Park Si-soo
Two pimps were arrested for trafficking female North Korean refugees in Japan and forcing them to engage in prostitution there, police said Friday. Police also arrested 13 female North Korean defectors for selling sex in red-light districts in Tokyo.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the arrested female pimps, surnamed Tak and Lee, ran a massage parlor in Ueno since November 2008. The two are also North Korean defectors to the South.
The women defectors were forced to sell sex for 6,000 to 10,000 yen per hour, it said. The pimps racked up more than 1.1 billion won in illegal gains.
Investigators said they coaxed jobless female defectors here with the promise that they could make more than 15 million won a month in Japan.
Some of the trafficked women said during questioning they engaged in the illegal business to cover fees needed to take their family members still in the North out of the poverty-stricken state.
“This was the first case to catch a group of prostitutes and pimps, all of whom are North Korean,” a police officer said.
A growing number of female defectors leave for Japan voluntarily in recent years to enter into the sex industry there, a desperate move to escape from financial hardship in the South, the officer said.
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