Two arrested in family-run brothel case

/ gettyimagesbank

By Ko Dong-hwan

Two people have been arrested in connection with a family-run brothels they operated in Suwon for 23 years after "inheriting" the illegal business from their mother, police said Thursday.

It is alleged the brothels made 12.8 billion won ($11.5 million) profits in that time.

Three others ― another sibling and their spouses ― are also under investigation for allegedly aiding the two arrested individuals.

The investigation began after two women filed a complaint five months ago with the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office; they claimed they had been forced into prostitution and abused for more than a year by the suspects.

Last month police raided five brothels run by the suspects near Suwon Station to secure evidence and immediately froze assets worth about 6.2 billion won before handing the case back to prosecutors.

The siblings reportedly took over the business in 1998 from their mother, who had run brothels in the Suwon area for decades. She died in 2019.

The suspects allegedly lured women with financial debts to sex work by partially paying off their debts, police said. They then forced the women to work regardless of their health conditions and limited their time off.

The red-light district near the station first sprung up in the early 1960s and continued to grow as many as 100 establishments before police started to turn their attention to them on them in the early 2000s. Redevelopment in the area, has seen the number of brothels decreased.

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