US military police protected bars and trafficked women near South Korean bases.
Evidence
In 2002, a Cleveland television station exposed how military police officers were protecting the bars and the GIs in them, and interacting with women they knew had been trafficked and sold at auction. “You know something is wrong when the girls are asking you to buy them bread,” one soldier said. “They can’t leave the clubs. They barely feed them.” Another commented, “There are only Americans in these clubs. If they’re bringing these women over here to work for us, they should get paid a fair wage. They should have the right to a day off.” (Most of the women get one day off a month.) In a 2002 report, the State Department confirmed that South Korea was a destination for trafficked women. And in 2007, three researchers concluded that U.S. bases in South Korea have become “a hub for the transnational trafficking of women from the Asia Pacific and Eurasia to South Korea and the United States.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 495
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: Possible angle: how military police actively shielded a trafficking economy rather than policing it, and what that reveals about institutional complicity.
Related
- US military police actively protected bars trafficking women near bases (similarity 0.98)
- South Korea and the US both criminalized prostitution near bases in 2004-2005. (similarity 0.86)
- Trafficking victims near US bases face debt bondage enforced by passport confiscation (similarity 0.81)
- Most Korean women in U.S. massage parlors were previously married to GIs (similarity 0.79)
- Overseas basing worsens sexual assault and fuels trafficking (similarity 0.79)
- South Korean officials actively promoted sex work to attract GI dollars. (similarity 0.79)
- Traffickers take over half the earnings of women they import for camptown bars (similarity 0.78)