A 42-year-old prostitute's recent appeal against the government crackdown on sex trade is renewing debates here over arguably the oldest job on Earth. Last year, hundreds of sex workers also called for recognizing their jobs as a legal profession that pays taxes.
A district court's judge added fuel to the burning issue last week by questioning the constitutionality of criminal punishment of prostitutes and their clients as violating self-determining rights of adult individuals.
All this boils down to the Special Law on Sex Trade introduced in 2004 to protect the basic rights of prostitutes by calling for imposing penalties of up to 1 one year in prison or 3 million won on both sellers and buyers of sex as well as pimps. The law has helped some women coerced into the job, by force and violence, but has done nothing, or even aggravated situations, for those who jumped into the job inevitably but voluntarily, like that petitioner.
''I cannot survive without this job," she said. ''I don't want to be treated as a criminal for making a living in the only way I can." The prostitutes cannot protest against clients who refuse to pay or even exercise violence for fear of getting caught. The men caught buying sex, however, often get away with some perfunctory education, or ''john's classes."
Over the past eight years, the anti-prostitution law notably reduced the red districts but expanded them to the rest of the society in the form of various pseudo-brothels such as massage parlors, kissing rooms and even office-residences using SNS communications.
Legalizing the sex trade may help to reduce increasingly frequent and violent sexual crimes and respect the human rights of women, but runs the high risk of encouraging prostitution in a country where sex industry's annual volume is five times larger than the film industry's and export women to foreign countries with large Korean communities.
It remains to be seen how the Constitutional Court will rule on this case in six months or so. A compromise plan thinkable for now seems to be to consider decriminalizing prostitutions while strengthening punishments of clients by weakening the ''demand side."
A district court's judge added fuel to the burning issue last week by questioning the constitutionality of criminal punishment of prostitutes and their clients as violating self-determining rights of adult individuals.
All this boils down to the Special Law on Sex Trade introduced in 2004 to protect the basic rights of prostitutes by calling for imposing penalties of up to 1 one year in prison or 3 million won on both sellers and buyers of sex as well as pimps. The law has helped some women coerced into the job, by force and violence, but has done nothing, or even aggravated situations, for those who jumped into the job inevitably but voluntarily, like that petitioner.
''I cannot survive without this job," she said. ''I don't want to be treated as a criminal for making a living in the only way I can." The prostitutes cannot protest against clients who refuse to pay or even exercise violence for fear of getting caught. The men caught buying sex, however, often get away with some perfunctory education, or ''john's classes."
Over the past eight years, the anti-prostitution law notably reduced the red districts but expanded them to the rest of the society in the form of various pseudo-brothels such as massage parlors, kissing rooms and even office-residences using SNS communications.
Legalizing the sex trade may help to reduce increasingly frequent and violent sexual crimes and respect the human rights of women, but runs the high risk of encouraging prostitution in a country where sex industry's annual volume is five times larger than the film industry's and export women to foreign countries with large Korean communities.
It remains to be seen how the Constitutional Court will rule on this case in six months or so. A compromise plan thinkable for now seems to be to consider decriminalizing prostitutions while strengthening punishments of clients by weakening the ''demand side."
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