An estimated 4,000 persons, primarily women, engage in sex work in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (UNICEF 2006). The 1998 Mongolian Law against Pornography and Prostitution made the organisation or facilitation of prostitution illegal. However, many small hotels, massage parlours, salons, saunas, bars and nightclubs still organise and provide sex services for their clients. […]

Catherine E. Carlson, Laura Cordisco Tsai, Toivgoo Aira, Marion Riedel, and Susan S. Witte Introduction Landlocked between Russia and China and comprised of over one-and-a-half million square kilometres, yet with a population of just under three million, Mongolia has the lowest population density of any country in the world (World Atlas 2012). In 1992, Mongolia […]

Changes to the language used to describe prostitution in Korea are important because they reveal the contours of debates over how to categorise sex work. Is it a plight or a profession? This question came to a head in 2004 when the progressive government of former President Roh Moo-hyun passed legislation to criminalise sex work. […]

In 2000 a fire broke out in a brothel in Gunsan in Cholla Province in which five women perished. In 2002 another fire broke out in Gunsan, this time in a drinking establishment. Twelve women died in this fire because they had been locked in their rooms. These fires and the attention they garnered brought […]

While prostitution for US troops in the post-war period is tied to US neo-colonial and economic interests in the Korean peninsula, the growth of a domestic prostitution industry for local clients is connected to the creation of a new urban proletariat in industrialising South Korea. When major general Park Chung Hee (1917—79) seized power in […]

In the final stages of the Second World War the United States and the Soviet Union had negotiated a joint occupation of Korea. After Japan’s surrender Soviet troops moved to occupy the north, and American forces took control of the southern part of the peninsula whose dividing line became the 38th parallel. As Japan’s total […]

The history of kisaeng (traditional courtesans) or kinyo as they were originally called, goes back several centuries to the Koryo Dynasty (918—1392). Kisaeng were the favoured court entertainers during the long Chosfin Dynasty (1392—1910) and their accomplishments and erudition made them the natural companions of aristocratic men at leisure. Their low status as members of […]

Ruth Barraclough Introduction In one of the permanent exhibits at the Seoul Museum of History (Soul Yoksa Pakmulkwan) kisaeng or traditional courtesans are commemorated as part of the history of modernising Seoul in the twentieth century. Photographs, postcards and costumes of kisaeng from the 1910s and 1920s are displayed alongside pictures of the grand ornamental […]

In our outreach work by SWASH we have found that migrant sex workers who are in the illegal sector of the industry and usually have a greater need for money are more likely than their Japanese counterparts to engage in the most risky acts. They refer to ‘honban’ (literally the ‘real turn’) full sexual intercourse, […]

As the feminisation of migrant labour accelerates in Asia and the world, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children was adopted in 2000 as a supplement to the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The UN now defines trafficking in persons as a contemporary form of slavery, especially in […]