Did Korea encourage sex work at US bases?
source : 2014.11.28 BBC (ボタンクリックで引用記事が開閉)
More than 120 former prostitutes who worked near a US military base in South Korea are going to court to seek compensation from the Korean government. They say the authorities actively facilitated their work - and that the system has left them in poverty now that they are old.
For as long as armies have gathered in garrisons, ramshackle "camp-towns" have grown up around them. In South Korea, they reach right up to the walls of US bases - by night, they throb with music and neon, by day, they seem to recover from the night before.
They are now the scene of an intriguing legal dispute. More than 120 former prostitutes, who are ageing and poor, are suing not the American authorities but their own government, demanding compensation of $10,000 (£6,360) each. Their argument is that the South Korean government facilitated their work in order to keep American forces happy.
In a community centre next to the US base at Uijeongbu City in South Korea, a group of them gather to explain their case. "We worked all night long. What I want is for the Korean government to recognise that this is a system that it created... and also compensation."
Their argument is not that South Korea compelled them to work as prostitutes - this is not a case of sexual slavery - but that by instituting a system of official and compulsory check-ups on their sexual health, it was complicit, and facilitated a system which now leaves them in poverty. It also, they say, gave them English lessons and courses in "Western etiquette".
The women invariably say that they were driven to prostitution because they were poor, living in a very poor country. They applied for unspecified jobs and then found themselves in bars and brothels having to borrow from the owner, and thus became locked into the system.
"In 1972, I went to an employment placement centre and the counsellor asked me to stand up and sit down. He took a look at me and then promised me a job that would give me a place to stay and food to eat, so I would just be working and my room and board would be taken care of by my boss," says one woman.
They also argue that there was tacit approval because the country needed foreign currency. The prostitutes were reviled as people but the dollars they earned were welcomed.
"There was this talk going round about earning dollars by working in the clubs, and that that would would make you a patriot - somebody who was a hard-working Korean. We did earn a lot of dollars in the camp town," one of the women tells me.
Their voices rise in anger and fall in sorrow as they relate their sad tales.
韓国政府が作り上げた米軍向け慰安婦制度、元慰安婦が国を告訴 英メディア
source : 2014.11.30 Record China (ボタンクリックで引用記事が開閉)
2014年11月28日、中国日報網は記事「韓国政府はかつて米軍向けの性サービス提供を奨励していた＝従事者100人超が賠償求め告訴」を掲載した。
英BBC放送は韓国の米軍慰安婦訴訟について報じた。韓国ではかつて在韓米軍基地周辺に基地村と呼ばれる売春街が存在した。売春は法律で禁じられていたが韓国政府は黙認、それどころか性病管理所で定期的な検査を実施するなど実質的な管理に携わっていたという。
今年6月、基地村での売春従事者122人が「国が米軍相手の慰安婦制度を作った」と政府を告訴。1人あたり1000万ウォン（約107万円）の賠償を求めている。「国が強制したわけではないとはいえ、国が売春制度を作った」と責任を問うている。
米ブルッキングス研究所のキャシー・ムーン教授は韓国政府にも一定の責任があるとの見解を示した。1970年代には韓国政府官僚が基地村を訪問し、「君たちの任務は米軍を喜ばせること。そうすれば米軍はずっと韓国にいてくれる」と発言した事例を紹介している。
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