This piece contains subject matter that some may find offensive. Please do not read  this if you are disturbed by 'adult' themes. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Pusanweb or its management.

My intention in this piece is not to displace all sympathy for these sadly misfortunate girls, but to facilitate a more accurate understanding and informed wariness of this industry, and finally, to dissuade other would-be saviors from the whorish gallantry and exploitive chivalry as heroically bestowed by a nameless john upon himself. 

Dear Anonymous john,

Well, glory be!  Beyond the pillars of engineering academia and Mrs. Anonymous’ famous rhubarb pie, there lies a quite fucked up world.  Proper fucked, indeed!  Wake up!  For an older guy with a college degree, you sure are naïve.  You’re the reason—at least one of the many stiff ones—why this business exists.  You can’t vindicate all your sexploitation by buying off one twenty-one year old waif.  Who are you?  Some honorary Mormon who bicycles into the sex districts of foreign countries in search of slender, lip-sticked souls to save?  Is your arm sore yet from patting yourself on the back?
 
I’d like to propose a less wordy version of your story…

I came to Korea to supervise guys who build shit without safety codes.  I hung out with so many prostitutes that I learned how to spell all of their countries of origin.  As I bought drinks for the lot of them, a story slowly began to unfold; a story of deceit and corruption, of sex and money.  Finally, after wading through the bars, and sometimes beds, of the bigger, more voluptuous ones, I found a skinny young one that did such things to my “lusty old” dinky.  Things that words simply cannot describe.  She was like a pornstar incarnate, but without the gratuitously orgasmic fakery.  She was a good girl, MY good girl.  Although soured by circumstances, she still managed to experience joy, but only when she was with me.  During our pillow talk sessions, I began to sympathize and finally decided to break her chains of sexual bondage.   I purchased her contract with my almighty dollars and paid off the tyrants who had been keeping her here.  Her story—and her pussy—compelled me to set her free.  It was spendy, but DAMN, if she didn’t laugh and cry and fuck like never before!  Her freedom being signed and sealed, I delivered her to the train station and watched as my tangy butterfly fluttered back to her daddy in Kripplechickstan.  And now, whenever she says her prayers, she’ll whisper one for me, her personal Saint Pink Dinky. 

Religion shouldn’t matter too much when a family’s starving to death, so I’m not buying the tainted-Muslim sob story.  The truth is that those pitiful sex-workers took a risk to get out of whatever situation they had back home.  Sex sells in any country, and in the business of international “entertainment,” scandal and exploitation come with the territory.  What kind of moronic father wouldn’t be able to anticipate the kind of work conditions to which his good little Muslim daughter would be exposed?  It’s not like these girls are told that they’re getting an interview with Intel.  And that story about the mama-san restricting the petite girl to just one meal per day?  Please!  How could someone watch her 24 hours a day?  Surely she could eat somewhere, somehow, if she really wanted to.  What would they do?  Beat her?  Which reminds me of a question:  did any of these girls show any signs of physical abuse?  Undoubtedly, they’re caught in a life of emotional and psychological torment, but physical abuse would confirm the enforcement of these dietary restrictions, which they would have ‘johns’ like you believe they are subjected to.  Here’s another question:  if you somehow found yourself in their situation, which story would get your customers to open their wallets wider?

“My name means ‘crafty vixen’ in my native language, and my devoutly Muslim father kicked me out for coming home drunk and smoking cigarettes, so I came to Korea to have sex for money.”

“My name means ‘angelic buttercup’ in my language, and my father, brothers, and cousins are starving to death, so I had to come here to make money.”

How many times has that story been told?  How many wavering would-be ‘johns’ have been reluctantly reeled in as soon as a girl whose name means ‘flowery puddle of innocence’ spells out precisely how and why she tragically wound up pitifully pounding vodka, sucking cigs, and haggling over precisely what is meant by ‘long time’?  How many engineers, john?  Do you envision these girls as being starved and curled up on cold linoleum floors reading their Koran, and then noticing a newspaper ad for “entertainers” in another country?  You said that many of them were naïve and innocent before being thrust into sexual servitude, but how do you know?  How could you be sure that they were such virginal angels back home?  Surely some of them were already outcasts who drank and smoked and fucked like bunnies before coming here and getting ravaged by guys like you. 
  
Do I think that it’s sad?  Sure.  Do I agree that many of these girls are taken advantage of by recruiters and employers?  Of course.  Have I witnessed their low self-esteem and pathetic way of life?  Too many times.  Do I agree that being a hostess or prostitute corrupts a girl’s innocence and irreparably distorts her perspective toward men?  Absolutely!  Hang out at a Vegas tittie bar for a few hours.  Or better yet, drive out to Bumble Fuck County in the Nevada desert and visit one of the dormitories where indentured sex servants are required to live for the duration of their contracts.  I am offended by your letter, Mr. well-traveled American, and by your egotistical audacity.  Contrary to your claim, you obviously have NOT “seen prostitution in all forms, just about everywhere on the planet.”

If you think that these former soviet lasses got it rough, then check out Thailand, Cambodia, or any other third-world Asian destination.  This Russian mafia shit is nothing compared to the sex industry standards of less-industrialized countries.  Try Bangkok brothels where rich profiteers from Mainland China take several wives expressly for the purpose of knocking them up so that the girl babies can be sold into prostitution once past puberty.  They raise them, then deliver them to a whorehouse owner, and return every few months to collect their daughters’ earnings.  There are no contracts, no buyoffs, no juice drinks and sob stories.  It’s just cash for pussy, and she better hustle it or else she starves.  In Korea, you pay the girl and her activities are largely unsupervised.  She sets the rates, and she collects.  Of course, each girl’s primary responsibility is to get the stupid stiffs to buy juice-on-the-rocks for 10,000 won a pop.  (Psst… I have a secret for you if you promise not to tell anyone: some of them, no MANY of them, will do it for free if you’re friendly, frequent, and persistent.)   If she squanders her earnings, or loses it, or drinks it, or spends it on stuffed animals, it’s all up to her.  Just ask M.R.

Tricked by unscrupulous Koreans?  How ‘bout this:  I was faxed a contract from the “director” of an ESL institute in Pusan.  I signed it and faxed it back, thinking that I had insured myself against any of that rampant monkey business so thoroughly documented on the web’s Grey List.  Upon arrival in Pusan, dude picked me up from the airport, took me to some foreigner flophouse for 2 days, and then delivered me to an institute I’d never heard of.  “Ahhh yes, I work for a consortium of language schools,” he told me after I asked when I would begin teaching at his school.  I was basically forced to sign a new—and substantially less appealing—contract in order to receive my airfare reimbursement.  I had no money to live on, much less purchase a plane ticket back to Amerikanistan.  Sex was never mentioned, at least not until I met that Canadian girl who said, “I want you to cum in my mouth,” and then I was hooked!  Hooked, I tells ya!  Self-indulgently locked into this life of all-night Hite benders, cheap cigarettes, and petite lolitas.  I spent 3 years trying to get drunk Koreans to buy ME ‘cocktails’ while I chatted unintelligibly for a ‘short time’ and then gave them the slip when they wanted to befriend me for a ‘long time’.
  
So now you’re thinking that those poor girls from Povertystrickenstan are totally exploited while I simply got fucked around.  You obviously haven’t been groped, gawked at, spit at, or puked on enough times while living here yet.  Who really thinks that they can fly half way around the world and get something for nothing?  Foreigners who come here must somehow somewhere sacrifice some of their standards, or else get the fuck OUT.  No employer, nor anyone else, can legally seize and withhold the passport of another.  There’s always an OUT for foreigners living abroad under a non-totalitarian government; it’s called an embassy or consulate.  They have them here in Korea.  There is also another OUT proven effective in immediately dangerous situations; they’re called police.  Of course, if you can find a lusty old rich guy to cough up a buyout, then everybody’s happy.  But probably the best advice to an exploited and starved hooker from Unfortukraine would be to scrape up a few hundred bucks the old-fashioned way, and then simply escape by airliner in the middle of the night.  Disgruntled English teachers do it all the time here in Pusan; five foreign teachers within two years at my institute alone.   

You don’t even know yet what sex means to women raised in patriarchal cultures on this side of the pacific.  Stay long enough and you’ll get a clue.  I have friends who are not engineers but who work in Korea.  They go to other poor Asian countries for vacations and manage to hook up with local girls eager for companionship.  No money changes hands.  Often my friends will go to a known brothel for a few nights in a row, but without purchasing any action, then eventually end up befriending and sleeping with one of the girls for the duration of their vacation.  Some of these girls want whatever kind of comfort and pleasure that can be found anywhere near a western man.  Some of them no doubt fantasize about floating away to Ameridise on the wings of his wallet.  They’re lonely, often times miserable, and usually shunned by local men.  And lets face it; sex is fun.  It feels good for the girls, too.  Many of them have no qualms about receiving free meals for a week in exchange for sex with a friendly-faced Caucasian man. 

On my first trip to Bangkok, I frugally hopped the city bus with my bags in order to save a few bucks getting from the airport to Khoa San Road.  A Thai girl with understandable but heavily accented English asked where I was going, then offered to help me get there.  She talked me into saving some time by getting off the bus and into a taxi for a few dollars more.  Having just finished work as a concierge at a major hotel, she invited herself along to drink with me.  Okay, sure.  She looked professional and was obviously educated, attractive but not a knockout, more of a marshmallow than a waif.  Long story short, I wound up on the receiving end of gratuitous sex for the length of my stay in the city.  She wanted to come with me to the southern islands, but I was leery and declined.  We exchanged emails and, on my next trip, she met me at the airport like I was her long lost boyfriend.  It was during that second trip that I began to notice some odd behaviors.  She would change clothes, apply perfume, and go out to meet another “friend” from 11pm until 1 or 2am.  Fragile and monogamous western male ego that I am [not], I casually questioned her until eventually ascertaining the nature of her extra-promiscuous activities.  She was not embarrassed, and indeed seemed surprised when I told her that I had never imagined her living in such a way.  You see, that was what she did…have sex with men.  Sometimes for fun, sometimes for money, sometimes for a nice meal, or for whatever else she wanted.  She was a kind of professional mistress, but not a whore, at least as far as she was concerned.  We exchanged a few more emails, but I never attempted to see her again. 
 
Then there was Cambodia.  (I am not proud of my participation in pay-for-sex activities.  However, I am not ashamed to share my knowledge and perspective on the matter.)  After polishing off a “special pizza”, I finally gave in and agreed to let my scooter driver take me out to “see the girls”.  I had resisted his countless offers for 3 days knowing that I would spend money that I couldn’t really afford for favors I didn’t really need.  He must have been paid a finder’s fee for bringing tourists; otherwise he would not have been so adamant and persistent about taking me there.  So we rode in light drizzle, with me feeling tingly from the pizza, to a remote area with maybe a dozen open-air-type cantinas.  They were arranged in city-style blocks, and we proceeded to curiously walk between the first couple bars just to get a look at the place.  Apparently, the light rain had all but squashed any chance of the girls getting much action, so they opted to run out into the mud and maul us.  Throngs of short, brown, poorly-clad working girls mobbed us, pushing and pulling and shouting unintelligibly for us to visit their establishments and consider their nubile wares.  It sounds stupid and barely believable, but all I really wanted to do was check the place out for curiosity’s sake.  I was shocked and embarrassed and tried to shake them off, but eventually a tall thin one grabbed hold of me and stung me with temptation.

They light your cigarettes and massage your shoulders and thighs, waiting for the world’s oldest question, “How much?”  And when you realize that $40 could pay for another week of room and board in this country, then apologize and shyly get up to leave, they pull you back down beside them, pouting pitifully while rubbing their pertness against you, forcing eye contact that demands you take what they’re selling.

Well, Anonymous, I hope that engineering pays well because our world has plenty more prostitutes to save.

And to all you wanna-be Hooker Heroes out there:  I know a guy who went to an Asian sex club, accepted a young girl’s offer and left with her, then changed his mind after stopping for another drink.  He told her “No thank you…I’m sorry,” and then she began to literally cry and sob miserably until he relented and took her back to his room.  Once she was naked, he could hardly refuse her, and quite foolishly, he barebacked her skinny little ass, contracted HIV, got AIDS and died.

END OF STORY.