Escort Agency Sites Declared as Harmful Ones
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The Government Youth Commission has declared online escort agencies as harmful Web sites for juveniles. The decision is designed to prevent teenagers from accessing such agencies that regularly traffic in sex.
A survey of 69 escort agency Web sites conducted by the commission found that 23 allowed people of all ages to sign up without any verification; only four required proper identification.
Internet portals, too, were reluctant to protect teenagers from these Web sites. Among the country's five largest portals _ naver.com, yahoo.co.kr, daum.net, empas.com, nate.com _ only Naver and Yahoo screened for user age verification. So by typing ``escort service'' on the other three sites search engines, any minor can gain access to information on escort agencies.
The escort agencies' hiring of teenagers has become a significant problem over the last few years. Many teenagers were lured by lucrative offers where the company usually pays 20,000 won an hour or 300,000 won per day for escort services. The money is a large amount for teenagers and many of them were said to have applied for the positions unaware of the possibility that it could lead to prostitution.
When the commission made chat rooms available on these agency Web sites, 25 out of 48 people asked for sex. Only four asked for a real ``escort.''
``The other 19 also implied sex at the end, which means 92 percent of the jobs in these sites are actually related to prostitution,'' Kim Sung-byuk, director of the commission, said.
These agencies have given teenagers the idea that they can sell sex to make money, Kim said. Some 15.1 percent of 846 high school students in Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province said in a Young Women's Christian Association survey that they can sell sex for money.
The commission will collaborate with the Korea Internet Safety Commission and designate the 69 websites as harmful and dangerous for teenagers. If designated, the sites will require full identification of their users in order to screen out minors.
Also, the commission will ask large online portal sites to designate ``escort service,'' ``part-time escort jobs,'' or other escort service-related terms as ``prohibited words for teenagers.'' If designated, minors will have to input their resident registration numbers in order to get search results for the words.