Category: Prostitution

Text of New USFK Policy Letter Banning Juicy Girls in Korea

| October 31, 2014

Via the USFK website I was able to get a copy of the actual policy letter signed by USFK commander General Scaparrotti.  Here is the text of the policy letter:

usfk logo
HEADQUARTERS, UNITED STATES FORCES KOREA
UNIT #15237
APO AP 96205-5237
15 Oct 2014
FKCC
MEMORANDUM FOR SEE DISTRIBUTION
SUBJECT: United States Forces Korea
(USFK) Command Policy Letter #12, Combating Prostitution and Trafficking in Persons (CTIP)
1. This policy applies to all military personnel assigned or attached permanently, on temporary duty, or on rotational duty in Korea, and to USFK units or organizations supported by USFK units. Department of Defense (DoD) Civilian Employees and DoD-invited contractors/technical representatives, family members of military, DoD civilians, DoD contractors, and visiting guests are encouraged to follow this order.
2. DoD policy condemns practices that subjugate, enslave, and demean individuals, including prostitution and human trafficking. Prostitution and the patronizing of a prostitute are crimes in the Republic of Korea (ROK) and are punishable under the UCMJ. Trafficking in Persons is also illegal under Korean and United States law.
3. There are establishments outside our installations that support human trafficking , usually of young women, many of whom are brought into the country under false pretenses as entertainers and forced to work in bars or other establishments in violation of their visas. They are subjected to debt bondage and made to sell themselves as companions, or forced into prostitution.
4. Service members are often encouraged to buy overpriced “juice” drinks in exchange for the company of these women, or to pay a fee to obtain the company of an employee who is then relieved of their work shift (commonly referred to as “bar-fining” or “buying a day off”). The governments of the Republic of Korea, the United States, and the Republic of the Philippines have linked these practices with prostitution and human trafficking.
5. Installation commanders have the authority to put off-limits those establishments that engage in activities detrimental to readiness, good order, and discipline and I expect them to exercise that authority, particularly as it applies to establishments that support prostitution and human trafficking. I also expect service members to respect the dignity of others at all times. Paying for companionship directly supports human trafficking and is a precursor to prostitution. This practice encourages the objectification of women, reinforces sexist attitudes, and is demeaning to all human beings. Preventing service members from supporting human trafficking and prostitution outside our installations helps ensure the highest levels of readiness, promotes good order and discipline, and provides for the health, welfare and safety of our personnel and community.
6. Military personnel subject to this order shall not provide money or anything of value to an employee or establishment for the primary purpose of obtaining an employee’s company or companionship, inside or outside a bar or establishment. This includes paying a fee to play darts, pool, or to engage in other entertainment with an employee, or buying a drink or souvenir in exchange for an employee’s company. Service members who fail to comply with the provisions of this paragraph may be subject to punishment under the UCMJ, adverse administrative personnel action, and/or other adverse actions authorized by applicable laws and regulations.
This paragraph supersedes USFK Regulation 27-5, paragraph 8-6, dated 7 July 2011, until amended to conform to this policy letter.
7. If any member of USFK observes this conduct or sees indicators of prostitution or human trafficking, they should immediately contact their local law enforcement desk or the USFK Prostitution and Human Trafficking Hotline at DSN 736-9333 or Comm 0505-336-9333.
8. Questions concerning this policy should be directed to your servicing legal office or USFK/JA at DSN 723-7349 or Commercial 050-5333-7349.
//ORIGINAL SIGNED//
CURTIS M. SCAPARROTTI
General, U.S. Army
Commander
DISTRIBUTION:
A References.
a. DoD Instruction 2200.01, Combating Trafficking in Persons (CTIP), 15 September 2010
b. USFK Command Policy Letter #1, Zero Tolerence Policy, 2 January 2014
Fortunately General Scaparrotti did try and pull a LaPorte and make this policy applicable to DoD civilians, contractors, and dependents.  It only applies to soldiers. This does beg the question of how this will be enforced.  A juicy bar is still going to have a bunch of non-servicemembers buying drinks for juicy girls and some of them may look military.  So will the CPs demand ID of everyone they see that may look military?  That is asking for trouble to happen.  Fortunately the vast majority of soldiers being professionals will comply with the policy letter, but there will assuredly be those who will try and get around it.

The policy letter also tries to capture all the work-arounds the juicy bars might use to get around this policy.  For example the policy letter bans paying for darts and pool in exchange for time with juicy girls. A couple of work-arounds I do not see it covering would be a cover fee to enter the bar.  What if a bar owner charges servicemembers $50 to enter the bar that has juicy girls in it?  The job of the juicy girl would then be to wait outside the bar and try to get servicemembers to come inside.  Or how about the bar owner charging inflated drink fees for servicemembers?  So instead of the juicy girl trying to get the servicemember to buy her drinks, her job becomes to get the servicemember to buy drinks for himself.  If the servicemember does not buy a drink for himself then she moves on to the next customer.

This is just a couple of ways I could see the bar owners subverting the policy which they will assuredly try and do.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I think USFK has effectively gotten out ahead of the special interest groups back in the US that were looking to use the juicy girl issue to bash the US military with.  This new policy letter pretty much prevents whatever sensationalism on this issue they had planned even if the bar owners try to implement work-arounds.

USFK Bans Troops from Buying Drinks for Juicy Girls

| October 28, 2014

Considering all the attention given to sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military it was only a matter of time before USFK did this because if they didn’t one of the activist groups would have exploited this issue to bash USFK with:

U.S. Forces Korea has banned servicemembers from buying drinks for workers in “juicy bars,” which have long been suspected of involvement in prostitution and human trafficking.

While the military has maintained a zero tolerance policy toward both practices and some commands have taken their own steps to shutter juicy bars, the prohibition on buying “juice” in exchange for female company is USFK’s latest country-wide effort to close the establishments, which used to cluster by the dozen outside some bases.

“Paying for companionship directly supports human trafficking and is a precursor to prostitution,” USFK commander Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti wrote in an Oct. 15 policy letter announcing the change. “This practice encourages the objectification of women, reinforces sexist attitudes, and is demeaning to all human beings.”   [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but like I have always said the easiest thing to have done was to put all juicy bars with third country nationals in them off limits.  It is much harder to human traffic Korean women when they understand the culture, language, and do not have to worry about having passports held from them.  This latest ban pretty much has the same effect.  It will be interesting to see what new business model the juicy bar owners come up with to get money from troops.  Anyone have any ideas?

Sniff Me Teenage Prostitute Ring Broken Up In Japan

| October 18, 2014

They have some really weird fetishes in Japan:

japan prostitute image

Three men in Japan were arrested Thursday for operating a prostitution ring in which clients paid to sniff the bodies of teenage girls, Now News reports.

Authorities charged the men for violating the labor standards law.

The trio set up their business in an apartment in Tokyo. They recruited some 30 teenage girls aged between 16 and 18 and had them dress up in school uniforms, bathing suits other costumes. Customers would pay to sniff their bodies. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

A Look At How Prostitution and Business Culture Compliment Each Other In South Korea

| September 18, 2014

The Global Post takes a look at the massage parlor culture of Korean business:

Not far from glitzy office towers of Seoul are the frenzied hangouts where business is really done: a cacophony of karaoke joints, shady neon-lit parlors, and cluttered barbecue restaurants full of drunken managers ordering their junior staff to pound shots.

To Koreans, the business districts of American cities appear staid, orderly and a bit dull. A shop-worn joke here has it that North America is a “boring heaven” while their country is an “exciting hell.”

No salesman (and the majority are men) gets far here unless he can sing mean, inebriated karaoke and then slug through negotiations the next morning with a thumping headache. South Koreans slam the world’s largest quantity of hard liquor, imbibing 11.2 shots of soju per week, more than twice the average Russian’s vodka consumption (although soju isn’t always as strong).

What happens when this macho after-hours culture goes too far, littering the company tab with payments to prostitutes and hostess clubs? “That’s the business model we depend on. When the Korean men are doing business together, they hang out at these places,” explained the sex industry consultant.

There’s a dark logic to the debauchery.

“When you’re a man and you do something dirty and sinful with your business partner around, you share your secrets, you share trust like brothers. You can always trust your new business partner.”  [Global Post]

You can read much more at the link about the different levels of clubs, massage parlors, and karaoke bars that serve as fronts for prostitution to include how many aspiring celebrities work in the high end clubs in hopes of landing a wealthy patron to help their careers.

Former Prostitutes Outside Camp Humphreys Face Eviction

| September 8, 2014

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?

CNN Report Criticizes US Military’s Patronizing of Juicy Bars In Korea

| December 27, 2013

Via a reader tip comes this CNN video about the alleged sexual slavery of ‘juicy girls’ in Korea:

Anyone who has spent time in Korea knows that this video report does not describe the whole issue with the juicy girls in Korea.  I am not going to speak to whether or not the woman in the video knew what she was getting herself into, but I am willing to bet the vast majority of the girls in the Philippines do know what they were getting themselves into coming to Korea.  Just Google “Philippines hostess Korea” and a number of articles about juicy girls comes up.  Additionally CNN made no mention of the fact that most of these girls go to work in Korean bars.  This is hardly just a US military issue that CNN chose to focus on.  Heck trafficking Filipinas is not even just a Korea issue.  So why did CNN focus on just the US military?  Could it be because just as I suspected they would the special interests using the juicy girls to push the military sexual assault issue?  That is why I believe USFK officials have been especially proactive about trying to change the juicy bar system this year.  However, I continue to maintain that USFK should just put clubs that hire third country nationals off limits which would largely end the criticism.

Military Confirms That Ville Outside Osan AB Is Now Off Limits To Military Personnel

| June 14, 2013

The rumor that was first reported here on the ROK Drop yesterday has now been confirmed:

The Songtan Entertainment District outside Osan Air Base has been declared off-limits for 18 hours every day starting Friday because of planned protests by area club owners over the decision to prohibit servicemembers from frequenting a half-dozen bars found to be promoting prostitution.

The entertainment district is to be off-limits from 11 a.m. to 5 a.m.

“This action is necessary to ensure the safety and welfare of military and civilian personnel and family members, and to avert incidents and provocations detrimental to the alliance between the United States and Republic of Korea,” said a statement posted on Facebook and attributed to the installation command.

Songtan is home to dozens of so-called “juicy bars” where primarily Philippine women are employed as hostesses, flirting with servicemembers and trying to get them to buy them expensive juice drinks.

While flirting is as far as things go at some juicy bars, others are notorious for forcing their hostesses to prostitute themselves when they fall short of drink-sale quotas.

A spokeswoman for the 51st Fighter Wing command said the bar owners’ association has said that between 50 and 150 supporters will protest for as many as 30 days.

“To ensure the safety and welfare of our service members, the Songtan Entertainment District will be temporarily placed off-limits for the duration of the protests,” said a release from the command.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but the S&S had to of course once again make the claim that the juicy girls are forced to prostitute themselves.  This may have been true over a decade ago, but now the vast majority of the juicy girls know exactly what they are getting into when they come to Korea.  With that said what is happening may be a reaction to the fact that the special interests have been looking to go after the US military bases overseas for promoting human trafficking. Remember what Anu Baghwati from SWAN said recently:

At bases overseas, there’s commercial exploitation of women thriving around them, women being trafficked,” she said. “You can’t expect to treat women as one of your own when, in same breath, you as a young soldier are being encouraged to exploit women on the outside of that base.”

Now that they have lost the sexual assault fight the special interests need to do something else in the meantime to go after the military and whats better than to demagogue the juicy girl issue?  So the Osan AB leadership may be trying to get these clubs to clean up their act.  The rumor mill though has been suggesting that these guys were supposedly brought on base and interrogated in way the bar owners thought was inappropriate.  Then you add in last year’s Osan Handcuff Incident as well as past incidents such as the Osan Shakedown Scandal and guess things have finally boiled over.

A ROK Head was kind enough to send me pictures of the various banners that the business owners have strung up around the Songtan ville in response to what they believe is the heavy handedness of the Osan AB leadership:

Just to show that this type of thing is not limited to Osan, a couple of years ago business owners in Pyeongtaek were making the same complaints about the leadership “tyranny” at Camp Humphreys.  Even before that I can remember when they hung a banner outside Camp Humphreys saying “Commander Michael J. Taliento Jr., You go back to Afghanistan again”.  Colonel Taliento who was the post commander at the time cracked down on the human trafficking and underage drinking going on outside the post at the time which caused much anger with the locals back then.  So what is going on now is nothing new and it is going to be interesting to see which side wins out on this issue.

Do Juicy Girls Really Know What They Are Getting Themselves Into?

| February 28, 2012

Via a reader tip in the Open Thread comes this latest prostitution article in the Korea Times.  It seems like every couple of years some Korean reporter recycles the same prostitution and human trafficking angle to bash USFK with:

When Klarys (an alias), a 27-year-old from the Philippines, applied to come to Korea on an entertainment visa, she envisioned herself doing what she always wanted ― singing onstage.

But she says the E-6 visa was taken by her Korean promoter upon arrival and that the vision rapidly began to slip away. And very quickly, she says, so did control over her life.

The club she was taken to outside a U.S. military installation had little to do with music. Rather, she said it was a gateway to a seedy industry of entertaining soldiers ― a world where activists claim sex trafficking is not uncommon.

“For me, it was an opportunity to go abroad,” Klarys told The Korea Times. “But I got here and I was dancing on a pole. We were forced to go out (and have sex with) with whoever. You can’t say no.”  [Korea Times]

Considering how long women from the Philippines have been coming to Korea she likely knew full well she was going to be working in a sleazy bar.  As far as prostitution she can say no but the way the club system is set up she will likely make no money if she can’t sell the drinks:

She estimated that thousands of them now work in “juicy bars” outside the bases, saying soldiers ― despite the military’s “zero-tolerance policy” toward prostitution ― buy glasses of juice in order to spend time, flirt and dance with the women. Those women who fail to meet a quota for juice sales are often subject to “bar fines,” meaning they are told to sell their body to account for the shortfall, she said.

I usually say read the rest at the link but don’t bother because it is more of the same of juicy girls saying they were virgins before coming to Korea and expecting to sing and dance and not be involved in prostitution which then forced them to get hooked on drugs.  If you can believe it they make a claim that is all the girls from the Philippines that go to Japan, sing and dance and are not involved in prostitution.  So the article is the typical media BS to bash USFK with when the solution to human trafficking is quite simple, get the ROK government to stop issuing the entertainer visas to women in the Philippines.  But wait that would also dry up the far larger supply of Filippinas sent to work in Korean brothels, which the article makes no mention of.

I continue to maintain that the best way to handle the issue of human trafficking is to put clubs that hire third country nationals off limits.  Most of the Filipina’s working in these clubs know what they are getting into and human trafficking in general has been greatly reduced in Korea in recent years.  However, as long Filipinas are working in juicy bars there will continue to the perception of human trafficking that will follow USFK that the media will continue to jump on.  By forcing the bars to employ Korean workers it would pretty much make the human trafficking issue go away because Korean nationals would be much harder to traffic in.  The people that will lose if bars with 3rd country nationals are put off limits are the bar owners that will make less money because they will have to pay Korean women more money for doing the same thing these Filipina women are doing.

South Korea Takes Action Against Sex Tourism

| September 21, 2007

Crackdown time again, this time it is on sex tourism:

South Korea Wednesday announced a crackdown on its nationals evading the country’s tough anti-prostitution law by buying sex abroad instead.

The government will revise the law so that its citizens caught buying sex in foreign countries will have their passports confiscated, the gender equality ministry, the justice ministry and the foreign ministry said in a joint press briefing.

An inter-ministerial team has also been formed to clamp down on brokers who help South Korean girls obtain visas to sell sex abroad and travel agents who arrange sex tours for South Korean men, they said.

“The government agencies share the view that the country’s image is being damaged greatly by the purchase of sex (by South Korean travellers) in overseas countries and decided to step up crackdowns on sex trafficking here and abroad as well,” they said. [AFP]

Any bets on how long this crackdown lasts?

Middle School Prostitute

| June 6, 2007

This is seriously jacked up:

Police have arrested three suspects on charges of detaining a middle school girl and forcing her into prostitution with 800 men including a college professor and a doctor. According to police, the suspects held Jeon, a 14-year-old middle school student, against her will in motels in Gwangju, South Jeolla province and forced her to prostitute herself. The suspects are charged with beating Jeon, who pleaded with them to let her go, once every two or three days and burning her hands with cigarettes.

I wonder if these three pieces of crap will face tough Korean justice of probation and losing your license for sex crimes?