Whoreblogging

OK, I really tried to resist. I thought I was stronger than my temptation. I believed my values would always protect me. But today, I gave in to my purient side and blogged about Korea’s great prostitution crackdown. Now, I don’t claim to have any particular expertise on this subject, but having prosecuted and defended cases in courts-martial in Korea for four years, the impact on the Uniform Code of Military Justice does have some serious literary and artistic merit for me.

Incidentally, I blame Andew Petty at The Korea Herald for dragging me into this, including all three times I lost and had to recontruct this post. Today, he has a nice, balanced story in the paper, quoting yours truly. The subject of the story is the U.S. military’s effort to join in the crackdown (maybe it should be the other way around, since the Americans have been at this for a year now), how all of this will affect military discipline, the off-post economy, and the morale of soldiers who may have joined the military for “hot action.” Let me dispense with the last question first:

“People join the military for travel, adventure, college money, job training, and patriotism,” said Stanton. “At a time when the most likely overseas assignments are in Iraq and Afghanistan – locations that are hardly fleshpots – I strongly doubt that young Americans are joining the military to accelerate their sex lives.”

Actually, I believe that it will have some positive effects. For one thing, we won’t see this image outside every U.S. military installation at night anymore.

For another, there will be a lot fewer soldiers bouncing checks to buy their “juicy girls” another drink every 20 minutes. In fact, I’d call “Hooker Hill” in Seoul one of the greatest examples of false advertising in Korea. Sure, it looks like prostitution, and I don’t deny that plenty of it happens in these areas, but Americans have a much smaller role in patronizing Korean hookers than appearances suggest.

You see, in Korea, real prostitution looks like this:

And being that it’s Korea, it also looks like this:

Korea’s red light districts are very large, going on for block after block. Most are near train stations and have as many as a hundred girls on display. Most are also near police stations. These girls don’t waste time; they sell quickies. The rumor is that many of them are hooking to pay off high-interest debts to loan sharks. For men who like the slow life, there are hotel call girls, hostess bars, barbershops, karaoke bars, and “room salons.” It’s a very big industry, in fact, and it’s all strictly “Asians Only,” unless you’re Bill Gates, and you’re Mr. Samsung’s drinking buddy that night.

That means most horny Americans are pretty much limited to the camp towns if they want to participate in the same transactions as the Korean men. The rules are completely different in juicy bars. There, the girls’ real object is to see how many drinks they can make the soldiers buy without selling them sex. The soldiers often end up hooked on the simulated affection, and a soldier can easily spend a whole paycheck in one night in a juicy bar, with or without ever really venting his physical frustrations. I heard the same story many times as a defense attorney.

My all-time favorite Korean complaint about this is that American soldiers are corrupting Korea’s values, which is a lot like saying Bill Clinton corrupted Washington’s image of impeccable honesty (via OhMyNews, a pro-North Korean rag that’s so rabidly anti-American, I consider it Korea’s answer to Der Sturmer). Of course, if you can actually read Korean, you can see that there’s some form of prostitution practiced on pretty much every city block. Actually, I have a different theory, which is that what Koreans really object to is American men sleeping with Korean women, whether it’s the result of a financial transaction, a fling, or a lifetime commitment.

Today, the military is actually considering criminalizing the use of prostitutes everywhere, not just in Korea. What effect will this have on the military justice system? It probably depends on where you are. A soldier who is living with his wife in Fayetteville and sneaks out to pick up a crack whore–thereby taking the risk that he will infect her with HIV–will probably suffer career-ending consequences. A young, single soldier in Korea, where the community standards still accept prostitution, will probably get a company-grade Article 15 with suspended punishments, as long as he doesn’t embarass the Army or hurt someone.

The exception, of course, would be that occasional hard-line commander, which is worrying. A good friend (then a military judge) once told me that he considered prostitution to be a victimless crime that should not be a crime at all. Others would take a much dimmer view. There is a real risk of arbitrary punishments here.

Then consider this: a soldier who is convicted of patronizing a prostitute and then returns to the state of (in this case)Kansas might actually have to register as a sex offender. Now given that most defense attorneys I knew would not have thought to have the court martial take judicial notice of that state law, a panel could actually cause that unintended consequence, which certainly seems unjust to me.

Of course, prostitutes will find new ways to meet customers. The old arguments that they won’t be examined by doctors may have some merit, but I’m not sure how good a job the authorities are doing requiring Juicy Girls to get exams now.

If my conclusions are less than seamless, so be it. Sometimes in life, the facts don’t all point in the same direction. I am certain that the crackdown won’t stop prostitution, just like similar crackdowns didn’t stop it in Japan, China, Viet Nam, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. I’m also worried that it will have unevenly severe consequences for soldiers. But if it partially cleans out the camp towns that are a drain on the soldiers’ wallets, morale, and reputations, then something good will come of it.

Wise commanders will make cleaning out the camp towns the focus of their efforts and then let the local community standards be the guide.