Former Prostitutes Outside Camp Humphreys Face Eviction
Compared to the comfort women the women who used to work as prostitutes outside of US military bases definitely do not receive the same level of social support:
More than 70 aging women live in a squalid neighborhood between the rear gate of the U.S. Army garrison here and half a dozen seedy nightclubs. Near the front gate, glossy illustrations posted in real-estate offices show the dream homes that may one day replace their one-room shacks.
They once worked as prostitutes for American soldiers in this “camptown” near Camp Humphreys, and they’ve stayed because they have nowhere else to go. Now, the women are being forced out of the Anjeong-ri neighborhood by developers and landlords eager to build on prime real estate around the soon-to-be-expanded garrison.
“My landlord wants me to leave, but my legs hurt, I can’t walk, and South Korean real estate is too expensive,” says Cho Myung-ja, 75, a former prostitute who receives monthly court eviction notices at her home, which she has rarely left over the last five years because of leg pain.
“I feel like I’m suffocating,” she says.
Plagued by disease, poverty and stigma, the women have little to no support from the public or the government.
Their fate contrasts greatly with a group of Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II. Those so-called “comfort women” receive government assistance under a special law, and large crowds demanding that Japan compensate and apologize to the women attend weekly rallies outside the Japanese Embassy.
While the camptown women get social welfare, there’s no similar law for special funds to help them, according to two Pyeongtaek city officials who refused to be named because of office rules. Many people in South Korea don’t even know about the camptown women. [Star & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but what few people realize is that many of these former prostitutes were sold to pimps by their families and forced to become prostitutes. Other were abandoned children or orphans that were taken in by the pimps to become prostitutes. Could it be that the same thing was going on in regards to the World War II comfort women and thus the collective amnesia in regards to the former camptown prostitutes?
After reading that article a couple of days ago, I was left wondering how the other women in Korea’s massive prostitution systems from those days also made out. Were they able to re- assimilate or find a social support system?
Articles like this might leave some believing that what happened in the so-called camptowns, or villes, as we called them, was the sum total or a large part of that activity in Korea. Not even close.
As a matter of fact, for some, the villes were much more preferable to many of the alternatives. I was here when some of those women may have still been working. Those who couldn’t pay their debts in the villes were threatened with their worst fears; being sent into the low end of the system; the Glass Houses or setups even harsher, to pay it off.
Maybe, as one of the women in the article suggested, it would be harder for her to associate with conservative Koreans after being around Americans, but I suspect there may be thousands of old, destitute ex-glass house women with similar re-assimilation problems as these women.
A few years ago, I saw a 1997 movie called Downfall or aka Chang on Korean cable TV. It was about the life of a Korean women through the prostitution system from the 70s to the 90s. A lot of the look and feel of that movie was as I remembered it to be during those times. No GI villes were involved with her story.
The reporter should of asked the same Pyeongtaek city officials, how can there be a red light glass houses district right next to Pyeongtaek Station when prostitution is illegal? And as a matter of fact its right behind the Police Station to the right of the main entrance, lol.
While a long time ago, I learned a hard lesson about feeling sorry for bar girls, I can’t help feeling at least some sympathy towards the old girls. Stll, you make bad choices in life, you eventually pay for it . They always had the option to run away from the club system, many didn’t do it because they were young, pretty and hooked on the attention they received. How many of them took advantage of young, naive GI’s, got married and soon divorced, then returned to the ROK and recycled back into the clubs?