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The most recent issue of Good Friends North Korea Today highlights the growth of prostitution in North Korea. Good Friends first started covering this story aggressively during the acute food shortages of early 2008, and has cast the issue in terms of the desperation and survival strategies of poor women. But the accounts provided suggest a more complicated picture in which prostitution is also linked to the market economy and the emergence of a nouveau riche in both the public and private sectors; our friend Andrei Lankov has made a similar point in one of his highly-readable Korea Times pieces. The Good Friends report also notes the systematic corruption that allows the business to flourish.
We were first alerted to the issue when studying revisions of the penal code for Witness to Transformation. A striking addition to the code was the stipulation of severe penalties—up to and including the death penalty—for “those who organize prostitution while operating a restaurant or motel.” This got our interest, on the principle that if it is forbidden it must be happening. These changes in the legal code give at least some credence to the accounts documented by Good Friends, which has been accused of focusing overly much on the food crisis and its consequences.
Good Friends notes the emergence of restaurants in Pyongyang that formally belong to government establishments, but are effectively owned by party cadres or wealthy foreign trade officials. These restaurants also run prostitution services, as do some bathhouses, beauty and massage parlors.
DailyNK has been covering this story for some time as well. In a story on Sinuiju from this year, they cite prices that suggest the wealth that is emerging from the China trade. According to their sources, the cost of sex in the border town ranges from $20-30 for housewives up to $130 for a university student. However, a 2010 story on Chongjin details a classic set of pimping arrangements that leave local women with as little as $3.
This issue is quite apart from the refugee trafficking industry, which involves both North Korean and Chinese brokers; Lee Hae Young’s Lives for Sale for the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea provides a depressing introduction to that business. And it is also quite apart from the even more appalling accusations of North Korean government involvement in procurement on behalf of the leadership and high-ranking officials. A succinct summary of these accusations is contained in an intervention by the NGO A Woman’s Voice before a hearing of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2004; Bradley Martin’s must-read Under the Care of the Fatherly Leader also provides details on these “pleasure squads.”
Re-reading the penal code, we couldn’t help daydreaming about bringing the underlings responsible for official procurement to justice for “organizing prostitution while operating a restaurant or motel.”
