Word: tongduchon
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...forefront of efforts to combat the growing worldwide trade in women. Republican Congressman Christopher Smith, the chief sponsor of the law and one of the lawmakers pushing the Pentagon to clean up its act, says he was shocked to learn that it's business as usual up in Tongduchon: "There needs to be a very aggressive ending of this outrage," he told TIME. "We need to lead by example...
...least 16 Filipinas have escaped from bars near Tongduchon since June, bringing with them similar horror stories. Official statistics show 5,000 women have been trafficked in Korea since the mid-'90s, but human-rights groups says the real figure is much higher. More than 8,500 foreign women entered Korea last year on "entertainment" visas, mostly Filipinas and Russians. These visas are a tool for international trafficking, says Goh Hyun Ung, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration: "The women don't know they are going to be locked up as soon as they get to clubs...
...owns the Palace Club on the Tongduchon strip, has himself been accused of trafficking in women. In Aug. 1999, police issued an arrest warrant for him on suspicion he brought more than 1,000 Filipina and Russian women into Korea to work as bar girls around U.S. military bases. Kim says he followed legal procedures. A judge cancelled the warrant for lack of evidence and closed the case...
...working in the area in the early 1960s, when bar owners near the base were granted government approval to form the Tongduchon Special Tourism Industry Association. That gave them the right to buy and sell alcohol tax free to U.S. soldiers and other foreigners. At a time when Korea was still dirt-poor, this was a vital source of foreign exchange?and a way to keep G.I.s from troubling Korean women not involved in the sex industry. Until the early 1990s, the women working downrange were almost all Korean. But in the mid-'90s, with the economy booming, Korean...
...Tourism Ministry. But Choi Byung Goo, a ministry director, says he does not know if there is any prostitution in the camptowns. "The bars are tourist restaurants for foreigners," he says. "There is no way we can know how they operate their businesses." If he had gone to Tongduchon last week, he might have heard about the four Filipinas who say they escaped from one of the clubs, where they were forced to dance naked and got a day off only if they sold an impossibly high number of drinks a month. The women told their stories to a researcher...