Korea's forgotten women
After decades as pariahs, some aging women have begun speaking out about their experience as prostitutes in camp towns constructed around American military bases in South Korea. Claiming they were victims of South Korean governmental policies, the women are seeking compensation and an apology from their leaders. Above, Bae, a former such sex worker, in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.
Jeon said she was an 18-year-old war orphan in 1956 when hunger drove her to Dongduchon, a camp town near the North Korean border. "Looking back, I think my body was not mine, but the government's and the U.S. military's," she said. Whether prostitutes by choice or need or coercion, the women say, they were all victims of governmental policies.
Bae has been suffering from asthma for the past seven years and lives on welfare. The camp town women have compared themselves to the so-called "comfort women" of Japan, who have won widespread public sympathy for being forced into prostitution by the Japanese during World War II.
A view of a night life district near Osan Air Base, an American military base, in Pyeongtaek. These days, camp towns still exist, but few Koreans work there; Filipinas and some Russians replaced them as the South Korean economy took off.
About twenty of the former sex workers attend services weekly at the Sunlit Sisters' Center in Pyeongtaek. The center advocates the rights of camp town women, many of whom live in poverty, isolated from mainstream society and missing their mixed-blood children who were put up for adoption overseas.
Jeon, 71, returning home with a cart of recyclables. She lives on welfare checks and earns a little selling scrap cardboard from other people's trash. She had a son in the 1960s, but became convinced he would have a better future in the United States and gave him up for adoption when he was 13. About 10 years ago, her son, a U.S. soldier, returned to visit. She told him to forget her. "I failed as a mother," she said. "I have no right to depend on him now."
The women received some support for their claims. In 1960, two South Korean lawmakers urged the government to train a supply of prostitutes for Allied soldiers who protected South Korea from the communist North. And in 1977, a lawmaker urged the government to portray the prostitutes as "women warriors" to acknowledge their contributions to the Korean economy. Left, Bae holding a picture of herself when she was 29 years old.
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