8,000 Korean prostitutes in U.S. since 2004

Well, according to one Korean government official cited by the JoongAng Ilbo, the Los Angeles Police Department suspects some 8,000 Korean women have entered the United States to practice the World’s Oldest Profession since 2004. In particular, since Korea’s Special Law on the Eradication of Prostitution went into effect in September 2004, the number of working girls fleeing to the United States via Canada and Mexico has been climbing. In Waterbury, Connecticut, 33 Korean women were arrested in early June for allegedly providing sexual services at area massage parlors. A Waterbury police official said Korean massage parlors have been spreading at a fast rate. According to the JoongAng Ilbo, Korean prostitution is becoming a social problem in the United States, and this in turn has led to increased anti-Korean feeling in the country. On June 30 of 2005, a 400-man joint FBI-Department of Homeland Security-police task force arrested 192 Koreans, including 150 women accused of prostitution, in Los Angeles and San Francisco. When local broadcasters, including NBC, reported on the arrests, on screen was the Korean flag (!). This year, there were a string of arrests of suspected prostitutes in Korean neighborhoods in New York and Virginia. An LAPD official said some 70-80 prostitutes were arrested every month, and 90 percent of them were Korean. U.S. law enforcement agencies have been on alert recently as the problem seems to be spreading from predominantly Korean areas to non-Korean areas in Middle America. A Korean government official said with some prostitutes getting busted after setting up shop in their apartments, anti-Korean sentiment among Americans has been spreading, with incidents of apartment owners refusing to lease to Korean women taking place.

Korean Americans

Until recently, Korean Americans were largely invisible in the U.S. However, like many Asian groups they had distinct immigration waves, suffered from race-based exclusionary laws, and endured a pivotal event that caused them to reexamine their place in the American landscape.

Immigration Waves
Korean Americans had three distinct waves beginning with 1903-1924. From 1903-1905, some 7,000 Koreans migrated to Hawaii as labor for the sugar plantations. Approximately 1,000 of these came to the continental US In 1905, Korea became a protectorate of and was later annexed by Japan in 1910. Japan then severely restricted further emigration to the US to stop the exodus of skilled labor and to stem the Korean independence movement. In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act limited Koreans entering the US to 100 per year.

The period between the end of the Korean War in 1953 through 1965 marked the second immigration wave. It was mainly facilitated by an earlier law, the War Brides Act of 1945, which allowed spouses and adopted children of US military personnel to enter the US Today,Today, it is believed that one-fourth of all Korean-Americans have family members that arrived as either war brides or adopted children.
The third immigration wave began with the Immigration Act of 1965, which removed "national origins" as the basis for American immigration policy. Until then, Koreans were a small minority, with a population of around 10,000.

Exclusionary Laws
Korean Americans experienced discriminatory laws similar to those faced by other Asian groups. For example, in the early 20th century, laws prohibited Koreans from attending school with whites in San Francisco; the 1901 California Anti Miscegenation Law disallowed intermarriage with whites; and the California a 913 Alien Land Law prohibited Koreans ineligible for citizenship to own land. Yet another exclusionary law was the 1924 Oriental Exclusion, which barred the immigration of picture brides.

Population Estimates
Today, Korean Americans rank as the fourth largest Asian group in the US with a population of over one million, of which 150,000 are Korean adoptees.

China breaks up male prostitution ring

China's rapid economic growth over the last two decades has seen the emergence of many new industries, including the sex industry, and the rise of male sex workers, or "moneyboys" in China.
Four Chinese men have been jailed for up to 5- years for running a male prostitution service that sold sex to other men, state media said Wednesday.
Zheng Shuyi registered the website nannanboy.com -- the word "nan" being Chinese for "man" -- and advertised it as a spa, but he used it to recruit male prostitutes, the official Xinhua news agency said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).
He then hired two rooms and sold sex for up to 400 yuan ($60) a session, the report said.
The prostitutes, based in the eastern province of Zhejiang, "went when they were called and offered their services," it added.
Zheng's defense had tried to argue that the law against prostitution only applied to women selling sex. The court disagreed and said the law did not define the sex, Xinhua said.
While homosexuality is not illegal in China, prostitution is. One of the men, who had syphilis, was also found guilty of spreading a sexual disease.
Prostitution was stamped out in the years following the Communist revolution in 1949, but has returned with a vengeance following sweeping economic and social reforms over the last three decades.