South Korean Court Upholds Ban on Prostitution

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/world/asia/south-korea-upholds-prostitution-ban.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — The Constitutional Court in South Korea on Thursday rejected a challenge to the country’s ban on the sex trade, handing a defeat to prostitutes who have campaigned for years to decriminalize their work.

“The growing trend to liberalize and promote openness in sex doesn’t condone or justify its commercialization,” Justice Kim Chang-jong wrote in the court’s majority ruling, which found that the 2004 antiprostitution law, under which prostitutes and their clients can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year, did not violate the South Korean Constitution. Justice Kim’s opinion was endorsed by five other justices.

But the court was more divided than in past rulings upholding the ban. Three of its nine justices fiercely criticized what they called a government crackdown on women driven to prostitution by desperate circumstances. One dissenting justice, Cho Yong-ho, called the choice of those women “a matter of survival.”

“The majority view insists that prostitution should not be protected by law because it harms human dignity,” Justice Cho wrote in his dissent. “But nothing harms human dignity more than a threat to survival.”

Last year, the Constitutional Court struck down a decades-old law making adultery punishable by up to two years in prison, a landmark ruling that analysts said reflected changing social attitudes toward sex in this still largely conservative country.

Prostitution has always been illegal in South Korea, but for decades the authorities turned a blind eye to it, and red-light districts prospered. That approach changed after 2002, when 14 young prostitutes died in a fire, trapped in their rooms. Amid a public outcry, the government enacted the 2004 statute, which not only outlaws prostitution but calls on the authorities to take active measures to eradicate it.

An aggressive campaign against the sex trade followed, and some prostitutes fought back. In 2012, Kim Jeong-mi, a Seoul prostitute, filed the challenge that the court rejected Thursday. There had been previous challenges to the law, all unsuccessful, but Ms. Kim’s drew considerable attention because it was the first one brought by a prostitute.

Attempts to reach Ms. Kim for comment on Thursday were unsuccessful. A few prostitutes who listened to the ruling in court said they were saddened and outraged. “We are not giving up our fight for a livelihood,” said one, Chang Se-hee.

Justice Cho said it was unfair to punish prostitutes and their frequently poor clientele while doing little about wealthy men who engage in “sponsor’s contracts,” or paid sexual relationships with young women.

Two other dissenting justices, Kim Yi-su and Kang Il-won, argued that the state should help rehabilitate prostitutes rather than punish them with a criminal charge.

But the court’s majority argued that decriminalizing prostitution would encourage the sex industry and “further degrade sexual morality” in a culture where, they noted, a common form of bribery involves “jeopdae,” a form of wining and dining that often involves prostitutes.

Kang Hyun-joon, the head of a national association of prostitutes, said after the ruling that it “pushes the poor women to the brink of death.” He said his group would take the issue to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The Korean Women Lawyers Association issued a statement welcoming the ruling, saying that if prostitution were legalized, more minors would be drawn into the trade.

“This is a victory for the nation!” a woman outside the court house shouted, raising her arms. She declined to be interviewed.