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In a first, dozens of South Korean women who worked as prostitutes have filed a lawsuit accusing the United States military of illegally promoting the sex trade for decades and locking them up to forcibly treat them for sexually transmitted diseases.
In the lawsuit, announced in a news conference on Monday, the women demanded that the U.S. military apologize and pay damages for playing a hand in managing a vast network of prostitution around its bases in South Korea. Korean women who worked in bars and brothels frequented by American troops have reported rampant human rights violations.
In 2022, the women won a court ruling against their own government. South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered the government to compensate dozens of women for the trauma they endured as “comfort women for the U.S. military,” as they were once known.
The latest lawsuit, which was filed at a Seoul court on Friday, was the first attempt by the women to hold the U.S. military accountable. The women and their lawyers said that the U.S. military was “the real culprit” in what was a state-sponsored sex trade, even allowing comfort women inside its bases and near its field training grounds.
Prostitution is illegal in South Korea. But local officials and U.S. military authorities gathered women for English and etiquette classes, according to some of the women and declassified South Korean government and U.S. military documents their lawyers submitted to the court as evidence. Local officials urged them to earn more dollars, calling them “patriots.” The U.S. military’s instructions for the women focused on protecting its troops from sexually transmitted diseases.
The infected women, but not their G.I. partners, were locked up in facilities with barred windows where they were heavily dosed with penicillin; some died of penicillin shock, according to the women. The U.S. military demanded the isolation of the women in such facilities, and the local government acquiesced, the women’s lawyers said, citing supporting documents.
Source: In a First, Korean Women Target U.S. Military in Suit Over Prostitution – The New York Times