Koreas patriotic prostitutes for US soldiers get justice at last
The three off-duty American soldiers hesitate at the entrance to the bar they are standing in front of. They’re in their mid-20s. One of them grabs the door handle of the place and peeps in. “Let’s go in here.” The three enter the venue. Minutes later, they’re out on the street again. “It’s dead in there,” they yell at another group of GIs passing by.
“It’s been quiet for a while,” complains one of the women behind the bar. “The US Army is moving a lot of soldiers to other places in Korea. So there are less and less customers.”
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Things were different in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when this camp town, and others like it, were buzzing with soldiers, prostitutes and “juicy bars” – entertainment establishments that satisfied their young male customers’ every need. A lingering legacy of the Korean War, camp towns sprang up across South Korea as US bases firmed up their presence after the fighting ended in 1953.
“Mrs Kim” – she requested to be identified only by her surname, and refused to be photographed for this article – said of those days: “There were a lot of women.” She was forced to prostitute herself to American troops from 1972, when she was only 14 years old.
She had arrived on the mainland a year earlier from the island of Jeju to live with her elder sister and her husband. One day “an uncomfortable situation” with her brother-in-law occurred. She was forced to leave the house and turn to an employment agency for work.
“The man at the employment agency asked me to stand in front of him. I had no idea why but I obeyed,” she said. “He just looked at me and sent me off.” The man indeed had a job for her: He sent her to a camp town outside the base of Camp Stanley in Uijeongbu, a gritty garrison town directly north of Seoul, as a sex worker.
“I had no idea I would end up there,” Mrs Kim said. “But I had no choice. I was already in debt because of the referral fee for my first job – cleaning and cooking in a teahouse – he had landed me.”
http://www.atimes.com/article/koreas-patriotic-prostitutes-us-soldiers-get-justice-last/