South Korean court rules prostitutes illegally held in ’60s, ’70s

SEOUL — In a landmark ruling, a South Korean court said Friday that the government had broken the law during the 1960s and ‘70s by detaining prostitutes who catered to U.S. soldiers and by forcing them to undergo treatment for venereal diseases.

Dozens of former prostitutes brought a lawsuit to press the government to admit that it had a role in creating a vast network of prostitution in camp towns, called gijichon, where poor Korean women worked in bars and brothels frequented by U.S. troops.

In the ruling by a three-judge panel of the Central District Court in Seoul, the women did not win that admission or the apology they sought. Yet the ruling was still a victory: For the first time, the court said the government had illegally detained gijichon prostitutes for forced treatment for sexually transmitted disease, and ordered it to pay 57 plaintiffs the equivalent of $4,240 each in compensation for physical and psychological damage.

“This was a serious human rights violation that should never have happened and should never be repeated,” said Judge Jeon Ji-won.

Jeon said the prostitutes had been “comfort women for the United States military,” touching on one of the country’s most delicate historical issues by using the same euphemism for prostitutes the Japanese have applied to Korean and other women who were forced into sexual servitude by its soldiers during World War II.

The plaintiffs had encouraged that comparison, arguing that it was hypocritical for South Korea to condemn Japan for its historical wrongdoings while not acknowledging its own role in ensuring that foreign soldiers had access to Korean prostitutes.

“They say we walked into gijichon on our own, but we were cheated by job-placement agencies and were held in debt to pimps,” Park Young-ja, 62, one of the plaintiffs, said after the ruling Friday.

Scholars who have studied the issue have said the U.S. military became involved in attempts to regulate the sex trade to minimize the spread of disease among soldiers. The U.S. military command in Seoul has said that it did not condone or support prostitution or human trafficking.

Choe Sang-Hun is a New York Times writer.