Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Sex workers want prostitution ban axed
/Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
A sex workers’ group wants a special law banning prostitution abolished.
Around 1,000 members of the Hanteo National Union, the Korean sex workers’ organization, rallied in Jongno, Seoul, Wednesday to condemn the law for threatening their right to make a living selling sex.
“Sex workers are persecuted minorities and the current law has threatened their livelihood,” they said.
/Yonhap
The protesters also referred to an Amnesty International decision on the sex trade.
At a meeting of its international council in Ireland on Aug. 11, the rights organization concluded that decriminalization is the best way to protect sex workers. It also said people who sell sex are adults who have the freedom to do whatever they want, and the state’s crackdown on consensual sexual activity is a violation of human rights.
The Hanteo union insists the sex workers have a right to operate their businesses within the law, and the government should take action on businesses such as massage parlors that provide illicit sexual services.
/Yonhap
“Because the government cracks down on sex workers and the business operators making their livelihood, variant perverse sex service operators have increased,” a union spokesperson said.