Prostitution in South Korea is illegal, but according to The Korea Women's Development Institute, the sex trade in Korea was estimated to amount to 14 trillion South Korean won ($13 billion) in 2007, roughly 1.6% of the nation's gross domestic product. According to a survey conducted by the Department of Urology at the Korea University College of Medicine in 2015, 23.1% of males and 2.6% of females, aged 18–69, had sexual experience with a prostitute.
The sex trade involved some 94 million transactions in 2007, down from 170 million in 2002. The number of prostitutes dropped by 18% to 269,000 during the same period. The amount of money traded for prostitution was over 14 trillion won, much less than 24 trillion won in 2002. Despite legal sanctions and police crackdowns, prostitution continues to flourish in South Korea, while sex workers continue to actively resist the state's activities.
History
Premodern era
Before the modernization of Korea, there were no brothels, but a caste of the women for the elite landholding classes performed sexual labor. Modernization eliminated the Korean caste system. The first brothels in Korea began to spread after the country first opened its port in 1876 through a diplomatic pact, causing ethnic quarters for Japanese migrants to sprout up in Busan, Wonsan and Incheon.
1960s: US military
From the 1960s until today US camp town prostitution has existed outside US military bases (for example outside Camp Casey and Camp Stanley). This was the result of negotiation between the Korean government and the US military, involving prostitution for United States soldiers in camp towns surrounding the US military bases. The government registered the prostitutes, who were called Western princesses, and required them to carry medical certification.
The US military police provided for the security in these US camp town prostitution sites, and detained the prostitutes who were thought to be ill, to prevent epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. This government involvement was in the past motivated in part by fears that the American military, which protected South Korea from North Korea, would leave. Though US officials publicly condemn prostitution, they are perceived as taking little action to prevent it, and some locals suggest that US Army authorities prefer having commercial sex services available to soldiers.
Prostitutions are visited by American soldiers, Korean soldiers and Korean civilians. In the beginning most prostitutes were South Korean with minority of other women from Europe and Asia. Since the early 2000's most prostitutes were Filipina and Russian.
The number of South Korean prostitutes who worked as sex providers for American soldiers and Korean soldiers was between 26,000 and 39,000. This number is according to the research on the number of checkup for Venereal diseases from 1953 to 1969 by professor Lee Young-hoon an economic professor at Seoul National University. Surveys carried out the 1950s and 1960s suggest 60% of these prostitutes worked near U.S. military camps.
Korean government(보건사회복지부) figures give 10,000-30,000 prostitutes servicing the U.N/U.S. military in the South Korea in 1954, about 20,000 prostitutes in 1966, reducing to 13,000-14,000 in 1969. reducing to 9,935 in 1977.
Since 2004, the majority of prostitutes have been Philippine or Russian women. South Korean sex workers have become less numerous as Filipino and Russian women were a cheaper labor alternative. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, thousands of Russian migrated to Korea to work as sex entertainers in Korean red light districts while thousand others forced were into prostitution for both American soldiers and Korean civilian men and soldiers. Since the mid-1990s, foreigners make up 80–85% of the women working at clubs near military bases. Human traffickers not only brought Russian prostitutes for American and Korean soldiers but also brought in many Russian women through sham marriages with South Korean men. In 2005, Filipina and Russian women became common in many Korean red district and even accounted for 90 percent of all the prostitutes in U.S. military camp towns.
2000s
In 2003, the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality announced that 260,000 women—1 of 25 of young Korean women—may be engaged in the sex industry. The Korea Women's Development Institute suggested that from 514,000 to 1.2 million Korean women participate in the prostitution industry. A similar report by the Korean Institute of Criminology noted that 20% of men in their 20s pay for sex at least four times a month, with 358,000 visiting prostitutes daily.