Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

What is "Wonjo Kyoje?" Have you heard about wonjo kyoje? If you live in Korea, you may hear something about it.

A survey in 2001 showed that two out of 100 middle and high school students had experienced the sex industry and 71 percent of girl students were reported to have been exposed to prostitution such as with a "Wonjo kyoje." The statistics of "Wonjo kyoje" criminals in 2000 revealed that 48.5 percent of them were in their thirties, 29.3 percent in their twenties, 14.1 percent in their forties, followed by 7.1 percent in their teens. As many as 34.5 percent of girl students who had had an experience with a "Wonjo kyoje" were 17 years old, second and third year high school students, followed by 25.9 percent 18 years old, and 13.8 percent, 15 years old and 16.1 percent under 14 years old. What do we have to do to get the anomalous sex-related industry on the right track by changing Korean male adults' distorted view of the meaning of love and sex? More than anything else, Korean men have to root out their ambivalent or absurd consciousness of sex in order to foster a healthy sex culture. Korean men! Can you ever imagine that your own daughters, sisters, and wives could be driven into the hell of the anomalous sex trade industry?
by Choi Tae-hwan
The writer is an English teacher at Unnam High School in Kwangju.
Korea Times (October 22, 2004)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200410/kt2004102218550954060.htm

[phaedrus]

That's a mess of statistics.

I choose to interpret them in the best possible way, but if they are true it still leaves too many old men having sex with secondary school girls.

[shakuhachi]

�������� is not just limited to old guys and schoolgirls - plenty of guys in their 20's do it as well. Interestingly, in Japan they use exactly the same word for the phenomenon (in Chinese characters). According to my former taxi driver buddy, it goes for about 70 000 won on average (I heard that 2 years ago).

[inkoreaforgood]

I think you'd be surprised then at how much of the same thing is going on back in N. America. City high schools have it happening all the time in the bathrooms, boys paying girls. That's from some teachers I know back in Canada.

[Real Reality]

I never go to work without seeing many street signs advertising "Ring 531-4545 for sex phone talk" in public on the way to school.

...a great number of Korean girls are tempted to participate in this unhealthy industry. As a result, "Wonjo kyoje (a man, usually middle-aged, who pays juveniles for sex)" has become one of the most prevailing types of sex-related industries in Korea.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200410/kt2004102218550954060.htm