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Officetel Prostitution Flourishing in Seoul

Unintended effects from the Special Law on Prostitution continue to multiply. One Weekly Chosun writer decided to check out a new one for himself.

It is August 19th at 8 pm in officetel A near Seollung Station, on line 2 of the Seoul Subway. It is a mixed-use officetel just over 70 meters from Teheran Street. I've come here after calling a broker for 'officetel prostitution' whose contact information I found on an adult website.

I arrived at the officetel and called the broker again. The broker said, 'right now I only have two girls. One is 168 centimeters tall and size 55, the other is 160 centimeters and size 44, so choose one of them.'

After negotiations the broker said, 'take the elevator to the 11th floor.' I arrived at the 11th floor and after giving my money to a woman who looked to be in about her mid-thirties she said, 'go to room xx'. All of the regular rooms on the 11th floor are residences. The room the broker sent me to was 59.5m sq (18 pyeong), just a totally normal one-room apartment. There was a bed for two, desk, sofa, TV, refrigerator, and washing machine - and waiting for me, a woman in her twenties.

A new species of prostitution, 'officetel prostitution', is rapidly increasing at officetels in the downtown shopping and business districts of Seoul. Prostitution deals are flourishing in the offices and apartments of officetels near Gangnam Station and the Yeoksam, Seollung, Apgujeong, and Nonhyeon-dong neighborhoods north of the Han River. Johns learn about it through adult websites on the internet or through printed flyers. After the passage of the 'Special Law on Prostitution' in 2004 the number of brothels in red-light districts declined, but prostitution has changed into more sophisticated, hidden forms.

Ms. Kang, the 25-year old I met at officetel A, said, 'this room was rented by the 'section chief' (meaning the broker). since I communicate with the section chief directly, I don¡¯t know how many other girls there are.'

According to the police and prostitution workers, brokers specializing in officetel prostitution often have 40 to 50 girls working for them. But they always communicate 'one on one', so it is difficult to know for certain.

Officetel prostution is flourishing because customers can come and go as naturally as if it were their own apartment or office. Ms. Kang, the prostitute, said, 'since they aren¡¯t seen by strangers a lot of people come even during the day.'

In fact officetel prostition appears to be in boom times. At one famous adult internet site there are tens of ads from brokers for officetel prostitution. In one forum on the site, members can even make a reservation for the next day after looking at the women¡¯s profiles.

On the 19th I called 12 brokers whose information I got from the site and all but one said, 'please wait a moment while I check if there are reservations tomorrow night.' Then they would say, 'call tomorrow' and hang up.

Police appear helpless to stop this form of prostitution. An investigator with the Gangnam Police Department said, 'the brokers and the prostitutes have things arranged in a way that makes it difficult to uncover them. Officetels are set up with individual apartments and offices so we are not allowed to just to go opening doors even if it¡¯s to investigate.'

This appears to be the physical result of the 2004 'Special Law on Prostitution¡±' At the time there were an estimated 1696 red-light districts nationwide employing 5717 women as prostitutes. After the passage of the Law, police cracked down so that in September of 2007 there were 995 red-light districts employing 2508 prostitutes. So compared to before the Law was passed, there are 700 fewer red-light districts and half as many women working in them. The famous red-light districts Seoul 588, Busan Wanweol-dong, and Daegu Jagalmadang have nearly vanished.

But the number of people arrested for prostition continues to increase, from 12737 in 2003 to 29236 in 2007. Because of the Special Law and police crackdowns the number of red-light districts has decreased but hidden, unorthodox forms of prostitution are going on as before. This is the 'balloon effect' of crackdowns on prostitution - push it here, it moves over there, and nothing really changes.

The citizens organization Support Center for Victims of Sex Trafficking which helps victims of prostition to support themselves, said, 'with the Special Law and strengthened enforcement by police, prostitution has changed from being located in buildings, as if it were a business, to moving around and relying on the internet. To deal with this new species of prostitution the communications law should be updated and increased investigations carried out on the internet.'

Eating Marmite and Kimchi: Being Korean New Zealanders

Associate Professor Manying Ip from The University of Auckland School of Asian Studies will share her passion about the importance of national identity, the tension between nationalism and globalisation, and the diversity as a strength.

Manying will also trace the profile of the Korean community with emphasis on the cultural adaptation of Korean New Zealanders. Who is entitled to be called a New Zealander? And can New Zealand get racial harmony and diversity right?

Manying came to New Zealand in 1974 from Hong Kong where her family lived for five generations. With her strong classical Chinese education at home and colonial English education at school, she grew up sharply aware of the challenges of being cross-cultural.

Is Kim Jong Il dead? Yes, North Korea¡¯s ¡°Dear Leader¡± is no more, having passed away in the fall of 2003, writes Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura in Shukan Gendai (Aug 23-30).

A one-time Mainichi Shimbun journalist posted in Seoul, Shigemura is introduced by the magazine as a leading authority on the Korean Peninsula. His latest book, released this month, is titled ¡°The True Character of Kim Jong Il.¡±
If true, the implications are potentially vast. Among them: former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi¡¯s summit partner during one or both of his landmark visits to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 was not Kim himself but a dummy?the stand-in Shigemura claims has been fooling the world for at least five years.
A dictator having one or multiple doubles is a familiar notion since Iraq¡¯s Saddam Hussein was shown to have deployed them. But Saddam was alive at the time. Kim, in Shigemura¡¯s scenario, was not manipulating a look-alike; he was replaced by one.
Of course it¡¯s fantastic?but in North Korea, says Shigemura, fantasy and reality are not mutually exclusive. ¡°Japanese common sense cannot take the measure of North Korea¡¯s uniqueness,¡± he writes. ¡°For example: Kim came to Tokyo six times in the 1980s.¡±
Then as now, North Korea and Japan had no diplomatic ties. Kim, then heir to the throne under his father, ¡°Great Leader¡± Kim Il Sung, apparently traveled incognito by ship. His purpose: to take in the magic shows staged by magician Hikita Tenko at the upscale Cordon Bleu show pub in Akasaka.
Shigemura cites as sources (without naming them) several people close to Kim¡¯s family. He hears from them that Kim¡¯s diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000. From then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was confined to a wheelchair.
Was the flurry of diplomatic activity in which the world saw Kim engaged during those years mere sleight of hand? The ¡°hermit kingdom¡± seemed all of a sudden to grow remarkably outgoing. In June 2000 Kim hosted the historic summit with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The following month, he received Russian President Vladimir Putin. In October his guest was U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In January 2001 he visited China; in August, Russia. In September 2002 there occurred the first summit with Koizumi, culminating in Kim¡¯s admission, after decades of denial from Pyongyang, that North Korean agents had kidnapped Japanese nationals. August 2003 saw the launch of the Six Party talks aimed at North Korea¡¯s nuclear disarmament.
¡°Then suddenly,¡± writes Shigemura in Shukan Gendai, ¡°the pace slows.¡±
The second Kim-Koizumi summit, in 2004, lasted all of 90 minutes. Scheduled meetings with other foreign dignitaries were abruptly canceled. Kim¡¯s retreat from the public eye was almost total. State television in October 2003 showed him touring a collective farm, but mention of the date of the visit was conspicuously absent.

Kim¡¯s family, meanwhile, was in a state of upheaval. His wife died?of breast cancer, said official reports; assassinated, according to persistent rumors. His favorite sister, a high-ranking Communist Party official, suddenly moved to Paris. Her husband lost his post. Clearly something was afoot.
In the spring of 2006, says Shigemura, American spy satellites succeeded in photographing Kim. An analysis of the photographs led to an astonishing conclusion: Kim had grown 2.5 cm!
¡°Recently,¡± Shigemura proceeds, ¡°someone who was in contact with a Kim family member told me he heard the family member say, ¡®There¡¯s been a promise not to decide on Kim¡¯s successor so long as the current shogun is alive.¡¯¡±
¡°¡®Shogun¡¯ was Kim¡¯s nickname,¡± Shigemura explains ¡°If Kim were alive, the family member would simply have said, ¡®the shogun¡¯?not ¡®the current shogun.¡¯ The stress on ¡®current¡¯ seems to suggest that the person in question is someone other than Kim Jong Il.¡±
Shukan Gendai asks a government official who helped plan Koizumi¡¯s Pyongyang visits what he thinks of all this. His reply:
¡°Rumors of a dummy Kim began circulating after the summit. Some of us said we should have Kim¡¯s voice prints analyzed. But if we did that and proved the prime minister had been conferring with a double, it could have destroyed the Koizumi administration. So we didn¡¯t proceed.¡±