South Korea: more college girls work part time at massage parlors performing sexual services
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Sky is a South Korean college student who studies Korean folk music in South Korea. Because of the economic downturn, it's been difficult to find a job that pays her well during the summer. If she works at a restaurant or any other service sector, she would only be able to make $5.00 an hour. And it is only if she gets lucky. But, she heard from one of her friends that if she works at a massage parlor, she could make roughly $200 or $400 per hour. Of course, she wouldn't be just massaging her customers. She would be performing other sexual flavors from masturbation to oral sex depending on what her customers want from. She already convinced herself that it's different from prostitution because she is not having actual intercourse with her customers. Besides, she needs money to buy Gucci purse that she wants and pay for her tuition next semester.
Sexual exploitation is booming and justice turns a blind eye
Sky is not the only college student who happened to work at a massage parlor in a sexy langerie. In fact, she told the journalist that four out of ten friends of hers who are in college work at a massage parlor like she is. She also told the journalist that it gets busier during the day than night. Because their student status and they need to be home with their parents at night, college students often choose to work during the day time than night time.
Women's rights in South Korea
Gender discrimination in South Korea is already severe enough for women in public setting as well as private spheres. According to UN development indicator in 2007, women only "accounted for 13.7 percent of legislators, 8.0 percent of administrative and managerial positions and 40 percent of professional and technical positions." Washington Post reported earlier this year that women in South Korea makes 38% less than men, indicating the widest income gap between women and men among the developed world. One blogger who currently lives in South Korea points out a few things in regard to women's rights and status in South Korean society as follows:
Only recently have married women gained the status of "human". This came during a spousal rape court case - a man was actually found guilty of raping his wife. The judge noted that this must be taken on a case-by-case basis and should not be used as precedent.
Ajumas, generally middle aged or older women from poor backgrounds, are considered a neuter or third sex who are neither a women or a man.
When marrying, a woman's name is crossed off her parent's records and added to her husband's.
A euphemism for a widow is "A woman who has not died yet".
Most women are expected to do all of the child-raising.
Women feel they have to choose between having a career or raising a family.
College girls' commodified identity and massage parlor job
More and more college students are working part time at massage parlors. Such phenomenon however carries much deeper implication to women's rights in the South Korean culture. Though the college students might have chose to enter the industry, one has to wonder what led them to believe that $150/hr for performing oral sex or masturbation on a random stranger is worth the cause. Also, one has to question if they believed in their intelligence or other talents in themselves, whether they have still chose to enter the sex industry. Certainly, if they knew that their identity as a person worth more than a girl with a pretty face or a nice body, they would not have felt the needs to be in the sex industry even for economic reason.
For these college girls, once they failed to prove themselves to be smart enough to enter the prestigious colleges in South Korea, their next chance to acquire success in life is to find a nice husband who can support them for the rest of their lives. Or at least that is what the society tells them what their success in life should be. Moreover, in order to find a good husband with a solid income, the girl has to be pretty, skinny, nice, and obedient to her husband. She cannot be opinionated nor argumentative towards her man.
Danger of commodifying women
In a cultural setting like this, no one can blame these college girls for not being able to find a job in other sectors but massage parlors. After all, massage parlors highly esteem their quite but flirtatious personality with a pretty face and nice body. In particular, their economic needs make it even harder to resist the temptation of high paying job at massage parlors. Think about this. if nobody, including themselves, believes in them that they are worth more than a pretty face and nice body, what makes anyone expect that they would be confident enough to apply for different jobs than working at massage parlors? At that point, it really doesn't matter what kind of talents or personality strength that she was innately born with because it is already suppressed enough to be considered that the talent or the strength in her does not exist.
