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Pyongshin Sangja
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: I love baby!
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 Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:32 am Post subject: RCMP Foil US-SK Sex Slave Plot |
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Police foil sex-slave plot
Six Korean women found in south Okanagan were victims of a scam to get them into the U.S.
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Font: * * * * Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Six Korean women found near Osoyoos in the south Okanagan last week were sobbing and grateful to the RCMP after being told they would have been forced into prostitution in the U.S. to pay off their debt to their human traffickers.
The women were discovered huddled in bushes by the RCMP's Border Enforcement Team on the morning of June 12. The team determined they were the victims of a scam to get them into the U.S. under false pretences.
RCMP Cpl. Norman Massie, B.C.'s human trafficking awareness coordinator, said a routine patrol discovered the six woman, along with four other Koreans who were paying to be smuggled into the U.S. to work.
Massie conducted the interviews of the women, who all said through an interpreter that they had seen Internet ads about the chance to work in Los Angeles with no money down, and contacted the group to arrange the trip.
Most thought they were going to get restaurant jobs and had no idea what was waiting for them across the border.
"They knew they had to pay $3,000 to $5,000 once they were in the U.S. That's what we call debt bondage," he said. "It is all part of the deceit to get you down to where you are sexually exploited."
Massie said the women likely would have spent their first week in L.A. being raped to make them more compliant with the demand that they work in the sex trade.
"They were very, very thankful. They were relieved. They were disgusted with the people who trafficked them and deceived them." he said. "They wanted to go home."
Massie said the RCMP and its partner agencies continue to investigate the organized crime group that was trafficking the women into the sex trade without their knowledge.
Three B.C. residents appear to have been involved in making the arrangements for the women to cross the U.S. border. Those individuals are part of the investigation, he said.
"Then there were people in Korea to facilitate that angle," he said. "Probably the people in Korea are the ones associated with those in Los Angeles."
Part of the manipulation is to get the women "to believe they are going to something fantastic" in L.A., Massie said.
If the B.C. residents have already received money from the crime group in Los Angeles waiting for the women, then they may try to exploit and deliver new women, he said.
The victims, who were all between 20 and 28, were offered the chance to stay in Canada for three months to ensure they would be safe once they returned home.
But Massie said they all declined the offer, pointing out that they had contacted the group that brought them, so they felt safe going home again.
All were returned to Korea on Friday, said Janis Fergusson of the Canada Border Services Agency, which arranged their travel home.
Fergusson said everyone associated with the case was happy the women were found before they were further victimized.
"No one likes to see a person being duped into a situation that they unwittingly got into thinking that they were coming for one purpose and then ending up in another. I think everyone's glad that all the different agencies could work together...." |
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Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 9:04 am Post subject: |
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It's a big problem in Korea unfortunately. A general lack of respect for women here doesn't help the problem. 
The Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) is a source, transit, and destination country for women who are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Women from Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), the Philippines, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries are trafficked for sexual exploitation to the R.O.K. Korean women are trafficked to Japan and to the United States, sometimes via Canada or Mexico, for forced prostitution.
http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/SouthKorea.htm
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200507/200507030020.html |
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