"Seoul Nights"

A young lady of the evening fishes for customers, stopping two young men strolling through the streets of the Cheongyangni red light district, who are doing window shopping and fishing of their own.

This is a picture that didn't have a chance of getting published. It's not a pretty representation of Seoul, but then, foreigners who already live here know that everything in Seoul or Korea isn't pretty. The picture was actually newsworthy and topical, since I submitted it with a "newspeg" - in the wake of the Korean government's publishing of statistics showing that prostitution made up 4.1% of South Korea's GDP. (The Korean YMCA estimates that the actual number may in fact be higher - at around 5%.) To look at this another way, the industries of forestry, agriculture, and fishing COMBINED add up to 4.4% of the GDP. Put in more concrete terms, the statistic showed that 1.2 million women in South Korea are engaged in sex work right now, which means that anywhere from 1 of 5 to 1 of 10 adult women are presently in the trade. This is positively mindblowing when you consider the number of women over a few decades who might have EVER worked in the industry, especially considering that the role of the sex industry in the economy gets larger as you go back through the decades of the Republic's short, but eventful and problem-fraught history.

And the anecdotal evidence is something most foreigners - especially men - must have noticed very quickly after arriving here. Room salons, "mi-in clubs", 단란주점 (singing and dancing clubs w/ hostesses), massage parlors, saunas, and small hostess bars lining the streets of almost every street in Korea all dominate the landscape - before we even get to the large red-light districts that are in all-but-plain view all over Seoul (and Korea in general). The fact that women's bodies are for sale permeates almost all parts of public spaces. The fact that there are, if the Korean government's own conservative statistics are any indication, more prostitutes in Korea than schoolteachers, should be an arresting realization.

How does this affect men's views towards women in general? How does that relate to the fact that Korea ranks 63rd out of 70 countries measured in the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which is calculated based on the number of women in actual positions of economic or political power? Just to give this statistic some context, the US is ranked 10th, Japan is ranked 44th, Thailand 55th, Russia 57th, and Pakistan 58th. The only other countries that actually managed to score behind Korea were all places in which women's inequality is overtly and sometimes even brutally enforced; in ascending order of GEM rank: Cambodia, where domestic violence is not even legally a criminal offense, starts the slide down at 64th. The United Arab Emirates, where a man can still legally take up to four wives, is next, and Turkey, where "honor killings" of women who have had the audacity to be a victim of rape are still often murdered by male relatives, takes 66th place. Sri Lanka follows, with Egypt, Bangladesh, and Yemen bringing up the rear, last out of of the countries measured.

Sure, statistics can be misused, but they also provide a useful baseline of comparison, when placed in proper historical context. Another qualification: I am deadly sure that all of the people who would point to some flaw in the way the statistics were made would be the first to wear the rankings with pride were they to paint a flattering picture. If Korea ranks as the #1 country in the world in terms of broadband penetration, it's front-page news; if it is something like holding the dubious honor of approaching the 3rd-highest divorce rate in the world - right behind the US - the statistics must be flawed, or else the causes attributable to the ever-convenient aftermath of that foreign power-created IMF crisis.

So yes, there are more women working nowadays, but are there appreciably more who are actually making key societal decisions? Does the fact that Korea has one of the highest rates of state-supported and protected systems of prosititution in the industrialized world have NOTHING to do with the fact that it ranks nearly the lowest in gender empowerment within that same group of countries?

It's hard to step outside of your own Matrix. Americans have trouble with certain issues that are cogent to our own particular realities, such as the racist stratification of our educational system, our nation's bloody and imperialist foreign policy, or an irrational fear of "socialism" that prevents the richest country in the world from having any semblance of a national health care system. But across the Pacific, I think the hardest thing for Koreans to realize is just how unusually pervasive is the use of women's bodies in the economy. Koreans who view this picture often defensively point out that prostitution exists everywhere, which is true. But we're talking about a matter of 1) scale, and 2) state validation and support of the industry. When it is statistically more likely for a woman to become a prostitute than a lawyer, doctor, or even a schoolteacher - I think the problem is particularly acute. America, my own nation of origin, has its own particular problems; but in terms of scale and character, the problematic link between sex work and women's place in society is one peculiarly germane to Korea.

Comments

[mel]

Hallo, it's me:)i luv the photos and what u say still more!! i'll nip in frequently to check it out hee hee, good luck with your blog ♡

[howard]

cool blog!!
I'm very surprised to see that nearly 1/5 of Korean adult women has experienced sex industry.. I hope it changes in the future by the new law..(though some people seem to be abhorring the law..)
well, it's late now and i have to read the History of Knowledge..It takes way longer than i expected..

[Michael]

Good show, sir. I look forward to reading and discussing these posts over scrumptious 급식.

[Helen]

Great blog, Michael. I hope you continue. Reading your comments gets me fired up. On the flip side, I'd love to do research or an expose on how common it is for Korean men to pay for sex. VERY common, I bet. I have a few comments on all the pictures you take of Korean women, but perhaps I'll save that for a private conversation with you. :)

[matty]

MICHAEL!~ remember me, the white guy from KYCC??? it's been too too long. great to see you make your entrance on the ex-pat blogosphere. i'll be coming back frequently to hear and see more.

congrats and keep up the great work.

[James B]

True man...even after being in the West for many years Korean women (and especailly men) find it hard, I find, to shake the gender gap.

[hardyandtiny]

At least you were able to somehow get a picture. Most people are attacked by a group of "security guards " and forced to choose between relinguish their camera or fight after taking pictures like that on a public street.
Korea is attempting to hide its brothel businesses and it will succeed. In 2003 there were thousands of women in every part of the country standing behind glass walls selling themselves and now in 2005 there are none?
Ahh, right, the US military is consolidating its forces and therefore history will show that those glass wall areas were created by the US military. Maybe even enslaved by the US military.

[Nicola]

Hi there,

I really enjoyed your entries and found the treatment of some of the reasons for the hard core femininity of Korean women to be very interesting. While Korea is very much a male-dominated and misogynistic society, to say that Korea ranks near the bottom of the Gender Empowerment Measure is a bit of an exaggeration. Check out this link:

http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/indic_207_1_1.html

According to this index (taken in 2003), Korea ranks 30th in the world - still far from ideal, but not quite the hell that it is for women in other parts of the world (ie. where they're bought and sold like cattle, not sent to school, married off at 10, etc).

Otherwise, though, this is fascinating stuff. I look forward to more entries.

[Michael]

Thanks for the comment, Nicola.

Actually, you're looking at the HDI index, which ranks the overall development and quality of life. If you look at the Gender Empowerment Index, Korea stands at #63. The big surprise comes from the relative difference between the HDI and the GEM. For its level of development, that GEM is hovering down pretty low. So when we look at a country such as Pakistan, which has an HDI somewhere like 150-something, but has a GEM in the 50's, it gets pretty embarrassing. Of course, there are different ways to take these stats, but they provide an interesting common basis of comparison that can spur further thought. One might think about it in terms of the fact that although Korea is economically developed, people hang out in Starbucks, buy Gucci underwear, and have crazy fast Internet access - and speaking about Korean women specifically, women go to school, are in the workforce in higher numbers, and don't have overt and easily-condemned bans on appearance or dress - in the end, after marriage, or entering the work force, or wherever one wants to defined the transition from girl to adult - women's options get severely limited. Yes, there's no religious or otherwise specific ideological doctrine that dictates it - but the end result is that women still have nearly no political representation, no economic decision-making power in business or industry, and are still valued more for their appearance than intellect, as the sheer size of the sex industry or myriad personal observations seem to indicate. (I know - that was a crazy run-on sentence!)

I guess that's the real point I thought was useful to see with such indices. They don't tell a "truth" - but they do indicate some useful base points from which to launch into interesting analysis and connecting of various dots. For example - surely, somehow, in some way, the relatively large role that sex work still plays in the formal economy is related to that low #63 GEM figure. It's a really interesting correlation. Of course, this begs theorizing about all kinds of claims made as to its causal origins. And that's where the real fun begins.

[Ralph]

Good work.but dont you think comparing yourself to Winogrand and cartier-Bresson is a bit much?

[The Metropolitician]

Well, I don't really think I'm comparing myself in terms of ability, as much as talking about where a lot of my influences come from – retroactively, especially – and also trying to let the Korean audience know what street photography is; I've found that when people ask me what kind of pictures I take, people are often completely unfamiliar with this as a genre. So I am also trying to show people that my photography does indeed exist within an established tradition and that I'm not just a crazy man with a camera.

Know what I mean? I hope it doesn't come off as "I'm the next Cartier-Bresson" because I certainly don't think of myself as anywhere in the same league. I guess I'm trying to frame things as if I were trying to explain to the uninitiated what theoretical physics is and why its not a waste of time, so no, mom I don't have to go into the family business: "You know, like Einstein made that equation that changed the world and eventually resulted in the what we now call nuclear energy." Of course, I wouldn't want to come across as saying "I'm the next Albert Einstein," but to a mom in the 1950's who wants her son to become a doctor, lawyer, or accountant – "something safe" – I'd explain it that way.

Does that analogy work?

[Ralph]

It works. I just think some of it was worded poorly, by me and by you.

Anyway,
the photos areb good, done in that style for sure. I like the shot you entitled "In transit". Street photography is certainly, for me, the purest, and deepest style of photography out there because as you say, it captures that which lasts a secons, maybe less, and cant be catured again.

Anywa, I am glad to find your stuff because it shows me there are others out there in Seoul passionately into this crazy hobby. I have some questions about doing exhibitions and or publishing, but Ill ask them later. In the meantime I invite you to my gallery.

I aplogoze if there are any typos. Im pressed for time so I wont double check;)

[Ralph]

Actually, thats a lot of typos:)

[Sun]

Hello. I read your blog just now. I'm an architecture student who is actually dealing with prostitution problem in Korea. Your thought made a impression to me.

And as you said, Korea is actually not pretty country.
As a one of Korean, I have to agree with you.

Anyway it was glad to see your blog. Take care. Cheers.

[The Metropolitician]

Well, I wouldn't say "Korea is X" or "Korea is Y" when it comes to big words like "pretty" or "ugly", "good" or "bad" – I actually do find this culture interesting to live in and am doing a lot of projects here.

But I do acknowledge that it's tough to live here, especially for many Koreans who seem to have had enough of some of the more obvious problems, most especially related to education costs, real estate prices, and the like.

Many Korean friends ask me "Why do you want to live in Korea?" while I ask my Korean friends as a North American, "Don't you find Canada/US kinda boring?"