Marinol’s predicament in South Korea
Marinol, a Filipina woman in her thirties, was dealing with false promises when I met with her in 2008 in an American military camptown in South Korea. She was one of about 3000 Filipina women with an ‘entertainer’ visa in South Korea, and she thought she would be performing as a singer. But when she arrived, Marinol learned that she had been hired to serve drinks and entertain American GIs as a club hostess. The club owner forbid her to go out of the club and the residence for the first month, withheld her passport, and pressured her to spend the night with customers. The employment contract she had signed promised decent wages, one day off per week, and health insurance, yet it was meaningless and she did not know where to turn for help.
Certainly, not all migrant hostesses in South Korea faced the same degree of deception or restriction of mobility as Marinol did. Many knew that they would be working as hostesses, not as singers or dancers, and some were moderately content with their clubs’ working conditions. But breach of contract and restrictions to mobility were routine and recurring problems. When they occurred, migrant hostesses had little alternative.
Although South Korea has instituted anti-trafficking initiatives since 2004, including the passage of the Protection of Victims of Sexual Trafficking Act, the ‘war on trafficking’ has done little to address the problems faced by migrant hostesses like Marinol. Some feminist organisations receive a modicum of government funding to offer protective measures for migrant women in the camptown clubs, such as shelter, legal and medical assistance, as they were considered ‘victims of trafficking’ and ‘victims of prostitution’ rather than criminals. While some individual hostesses benefitted from such initiatives, especially those wanting to leave the clubs altogether, the overall working conditions for those who wanted to stay and work in South Korea remained largely unchanged.
