44page

Edited by Elaine Ramirez (elaine@groovekorea.com) COvER STORy www.groovekorea.com / January 2015 44 Why they fight With Korea’s Special Laws marking their 10th anniversary in 2014, the latest research commissioned by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family showed that the sex industry has not declined. The number of red light districts decreased from 69 in 2002 to 44 in 2014, but the number of brothel houses increased by 2.9 percent from 2010 to 2014. The number of women engaged in the sex trade in red light districts rose by 3.8 percent over the same period. Sex workers have rallied against the laws in defense of their liveli- hoods. The sex workers and brothel owners of the Yeongdeungpo red light district staged a protest against the increased crackdowns in sum- mer 2011. Later that year, around 1,600 sex workers came together to protest the 2004 laws. Kim’s activism is in line with these demonstrations. She was not co- erced into the sex industry, nor was she driven into it by poverty. Kim cut ties with her parents when she left for university because she didn’t want to live the life they laid out for her. At 19, she was working various part-time jobs to cover university costs when an unforeseen health issue put extra pressure on her finances. With money tight, an advert for well-paid bar work caught her eye. She applied for the posi- tion and found herself in one of Seoul’s red light districts. She decided to try it for just one night, but leaving the next morning, cash in hand, she changed her mind. Kim had little understanding of the industry at first. Describing her pre-sex worker days as “sheltered,” she wasn’t aware that the industry she was working in was illegal, having only the notion that it was “not morally right.” “I remembered being taught that sex work is unethical. There was no police regulation in the red light district where I began my work, so I wasn’t really sensitively aware of it being illegal,” said Kim, who has progressed from the red light district to a room salon to her current part-time position at a massage parlor. Her foray into activism began three years after she entered the indus- try, when she started to question why it was illegal to provide “physical and emotional” services in exchange for money. In 2011, she discov- ered Giant Girls Network for Sex Worker s’ Rights, an organization of sex workers that campaigns against the criminalization of sex work and the social stigma attached to working in the industry. She has been campaigning with them to decriminalize the industry ever since. Kim admits that not all sex workers had the choices that she did to enter the industry. While she took the job for the economic stability and flexibility it can offer, others had few alternatives. Her decision to work in the industry makes her advocacy all the more difficult for some of her peers to comprehend. “What the other girls are thinking about me is, ‘If she chose to sell her body, over all the other choices she had, why is she doing this activism thing of hers?’” she says. “I wasn’t in a desperate situation like the other workers. I had a choice; many others did not.” Along with Giant Girls, Kim is fighting to decriminalize Korea’s sex industry so that sex workers are treated as rightful laborers and gain the employment benefits that come with it. She aims to secure ways for them to pay taxes without registering with the authorities, as registering with their real name would ensure a lifetime of stigmatization, she says. Above all, she wants to be able to feel safe doing her job. In 2013, Kim produced a photography project called “Working? Working!” to dispel the stereotypes and labels that people associate with sex work. By giving people a glimpse of what her job actually en- tails, she hopes to eliminate the stigma surrounding it. “I thought the reason people tend to have a negative perception about the sex industry is because this industry is very secretive and people can’t know what goes on here, under what conditions we work in and what work looks like in here. So I wanted to show what it looks like on the inside,” she says. Kim is comfortable discussing her job when she meets new people. Instead of giving a fake occupation, she uses the opportunity to inform them about the industry and the way sex workers are treated under the law. “They think I’m a strange person and they are surprised. But after they listen to what I have to say, a lot of them are like, ‘Yeah, you’re laborers too, and you need (and) deserve rights as laborers,’” she says.