Considering all the circumstances, it is believed that migrant women have spread out from
the existing locations of usmilitary camp towns, tourist clubs to various areas of sex
industry of Korea and that the Korean government does not recognized the problem even
less is ready for the situation.
What we want to stress is though it is unclear how many of the migrant women who
entered in with entertainer’s visa for the past 15 years and who flew into us military camp
town returned to their home countries after being exploited sexually and financially,
considering the past practices at such usmilitary camp town, it is clear that there have been
generalized infliction on them from sexual exploitation and wage exploitation and they could
not receive any proper assistance from the Korean government or from any civil
organizations. We would like to call for an urgent policy shift of the Korean government.
2.2 Korea women in the US sex industry
Korea is also a country of origin for many victims of sexual exploitation. It is believed
that Korean women are sent to the US, Japan, Australia and Hawaii, as these countries and
region have historically close ties with Korea.
Since 2005 Bom-bit Women’s Foundation, International Organization for Migration and
Asia Foundation have raised issue of Korean women sent overseas; and a number of
international conferences on human trafficking prevention were held to raise social
awareness and ultimate to establish relevant legislation. Such efforts, however, lacked
consistency and continuity and the absence of a single government agency to serve as a
single point of contact and to develop relevant policy prevented valuable experiences from
being shared property to form basis of policy recommendation.
The following was discussed during an international symposium on the status of Korean
women as victims of international human trafficking (Bom-bit Women’s Foundation,
International Organization for Migration, July 2007).
Though the reference information is from years ago, it is hard to presume that the
situation has been improved as there has beenno effort made on the issue. We urge the
efforts of the Korean government to provide support for Korean women sent overseas and
to prevent occurrence of any further potential victims.
Timothy Lim, the presenter from Bom-Bit Women’s Foundation in 2006 stated that there
is something different about Korean women working in the US sex industry as most foreign
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