Diary of a Sex Slave

Short Attention Span News: Wherin the author of this blog cuts and pastes parts of news articles so that her A.D.D. - prone readers don’t have to read an entire…FOUR-part series. It’s still pretty long, so be prepared to skim. Assume that after a majority of the paragraphs, there are paragraphs of the story that are not shown here. The photo is of You Mi, the main subject of the story.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, written by reporter Meredith May in October of 2006


Part 1: SEX TRAFFICKING 


San Francisco Is A Major Center For International Crime Networks That Smuggle And Enslave

“Many of San Francisco's Asian massage parlors -- long an established part of the city's sexually permissive culture -- have degenerated into something much more sinister: international sex slave shops.

Once limited to infamous locales such as Bombay and Bangkok, sex trafficking is now an $8 billion international business, with San Francisco among its largest commercial centers.

"There's a highly organized logistical network between Korea and the United States with recruiters, brokers, intermediaries, taxi drivers and madams."

Once in California, the women are taken most often to Los Angeles or San Francisco, where they are hidden inside homes, massage parlors, apartments and basements, only to learn that the job offer was just a ploy.

Women report being beaten, raped and starved by their keepers. Kim, who also withheld her last name, told The Chronicle in an interview in South Korea that she was forced to pay $4,400 for plastic surgery to open her eyes and make her nose thinner and pointier, "like Marilyn Monroe."

There are at least 90 massage parlors in San Francisco where sex is for sale, according to the online sex Web site myredbook.com. The site has been around since 1997 and has more than 55,000 reviews of Northern California sex workers.

The city may even be unwittingly contributing to the problem. Thirty-seven of the erotic massage parlors on My Redbook's list have massage permits issued to them through the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

Read Full Article: Part 1



Part 2: A YOUTHFUL MISTAKE 


You Mi was a typical college student, until her first credit card got her into trouble

“For nearly a year, You Mi was caught in a sex-trafficking triangle -- starting in South Korea, one of the world's leading importers and exporters of sex slaves, and stretching to the exploding Asian outcall market of Los Angeles and then to the Asian massage-parlor mecca on the West Coast: San Francisco.

Along a crooked hillside market in the South Korean port city of Busan, vendors gut fish and wash chicken feet, getting ready for the morning shopping rush.

This is You Mi's hometown, also known as the San Francisco of South Korea. Situated on the southeastern tip of the country, Busan also has steep streets, summer beach tourists and even a white version of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Busan is also the birthplace of South Korea's sex industry, where Japanese troops built the first brothels after invading the country in 1904.

Busan is infamous for Wan Wol Dong, a maze of dark alleys where women are on display in row upon row of "glass houses." A peculiar Korean invention, a glass house is about the size of a parking space, with glass walls on three sides and a mirrored back wall concealing a private bedroom. Women sit on chairs or chaises or on the floor inside, illuminated by red lights that cast a pink glow.

Money was tight for all the families in her neighborhood, so You Mi never felt deprived. But in 2001, when her family had to struggle to come up with nearly $6,000 to send her to a university closer to the city, she realized her family was poor. At college for the first time, she was surrounded by friends who came from the glittering beach high-rises.

And they had something You Mi had never seen before -- credit cards.
A friend explained to You Mi that she could buy things without cash. A magic card, You Mi thought.

It was easy for her to get sucked into the shopping culture in Busan. Fashion is a major cultural preoccupation for South Koreans, who crowd the glittering neon shopping districts at night to window-shop and people-watch. Designer labels create the dividing lines among social classes, and women dress in fur, cashmere and heels just to run errands. Street beggars are nonexistent, and poverty is considered a mortal sin.

Such intense pressure to acquire "American luxury goods" puts the average South Korean family in $30,000 credit card debt.

Two years after getting the original credit card, her combined debt hit $40,000.

So by fall 2002, You Mi began to wonder whether she was willing to do the unthinkable: sell her body.

The longer You Mi searched, the more it became clear to her that she couldn't stomach the thought of having sex with strangers for money.

After looking for a week, You Mi found on the Internet what appeared to be the perfect solution.

"Work in an American room salon. Make $10,000 a month. Very gentle. No touching. No second round."

Read Full Article: Part 2



Part 3: DIARY OF A SEX SLAVE: BOUGHT AND SOLD 


You Mi is put into debt bondage -- life becomes an endless cycle of sex with strangers

“You Mi had not anticipated an illegal border crossing when she signed up for the job. Worse, she didn't know that she was a pawn in an international sex-trafficking ring -- and that someone was waiting in the United States to buy her.

You Mi had made it to the United States, yet she was anything but free.”

Read Full Article: Part 3



Part 4: DIARY OF A SEX SLAVE: FREE, BUT TRAPPED

In San Francisco, You Mi begins to put her life back together -- but the cost is high

“The door of the Sun Spa opened. The manager, a Korean woman in her 50s, led You Mi inside and quickly handed her off to the masseuse with the most seniority.

For the next four months, You Mi would become a person she never imagined. She and five other sex workers would share a dingy apartment on O'Farrell Street across from the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. She'd spend her waking hours at Sun Spa, having sex with more than a dozen men a day, six days a week, and scurrying into secret hideaways during police raids.

She would find the rumors about San Francisco to be true: It was a booming stop on the international sex-trafficking route. There was lots of money to be made. Customers plentiful, tips great.

But first, she would have to surrender her last shred of dignity.

What You Mi knew of San Francisco was limited to the two blocks between Sun Spa and the cramped studio apartment she shared with her co-workers. It was in the heart of the Tenderloin, the end of the line for San Francisco's most desperate: the addicted looking for a street-corner fix, the homeless looking for a cheap motel, the men looking to buy sex.

It's here where the bulk of San Francisco's 90 illicit massage parlors are concentrated, identifiable by double metal security doors, surveillance cameras and windows that are blocked out with aluminum foil, plastic garbage bags or paint. To You Mi, the area seemed grittier and scarier than the open-air sex markets in her South Korean hometown of Busan.

At first, You Mi was not making much money. Her constant frown made it obvious she didn't like the work. None of the men chose her from the couch on her first few days of work.

The money she earned in tips was also getting eaten away by little fees and costs structured into You Mi's working arrangement. Her share of the rent on her apartment was $300 per week. You Mi would also have to pay $50 a day for food, a $40 weekly tip to the cook, plus a $70 weekly tip to the Sun Spa manager.

Given all the incidental costs, sometimes You Mi walked home with as little as $100.

You Mi finally summoned the courage to call to her mother for the first time since she'd landed in California. Her mother was furious.

After You Mi said goodbye, she thought about her situation and got angry. She made up her mind to work as hard and fast as possible, even during her period, just so she could get out.

After hearing her mother's voice, You Mi became an actress.

She smiled at every customer from the couch, hoping to be chosen.

Gone was the sullen young woman who kept her eyes down and spoke only when spoken to. She told jokes. She flirted.

She turned her brain off.

For the first time, she had repeat clients.

The backroom bell rang. The Sun Spa women hustled to line up on the couch for a customer who had just walked in from the October night.

Moments before, the women had been laughing about who had the ugliest regular customer. You Mi was still suppressing a giggle when she sat on the couch.

The 28-year-old man, who had weaved in from a nearby bar where he was drinking away a bad breakup, thought her smile looked more genuine than the others. He pointed at You Mi.

In private, the man's eyes softened. He was the first customer You Mi ever had who didn't grab at her. His touch was gentle, respectful.

When he asked for her phone number, she gave it.

He called, and asked whether he could take her to an Italian dinner in North Beach.

Using an electronic Korean-English dictionary and the rudimentary phrases she had learned in Korean schools, she was able to talk with him about their families, their lives and what brought them to San Francisco. You Mi wasn't ready to tell him everything, but she knew she would someday.

Another night they went to sing karaoke at Do Re Mi in Japantown. This time, You Mi skipped the makeup and the sexy clothes. He looked at her in her sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and thought she was simply beautiful. He asked her that night to leave Sun Spa.

In November, four months after her first day at Sun Spa, You Mi had enough money to pay off the credit card debt. She gave $30,000 -- plus a $1,200 fee -- to a Sun Spa manager who drove to Los Angeles every two weeks with bags of cash.

Once in Koreatown, the Sun Spa manager gave the money to an underground Korean money changer, who called his people in South Korea and told them to deliver the cash to You Mi's mother.

All the women working at Sun Spa sent money home this way. Within the sex-trafficking ring, the rule of thumb was to trust no one, but there were a few unbreakable codes of conduct. Trusting a stranger to send tens of thousands to your family in South Korea without stealing it was one of them.

The day You Mi left Sun Spa, she had just her passport, some money and some clothes. The other women in the brothel assumed she was getting married -- the main reason most women left sex work.

You Mi directed the taxi to drop her off at the home of the one person who had shown her some kindness during her ordeal -- the boyfriend she had secretly been meeting for dates outside Sun Spa.

For the first time, she got to see what California looked like on the outside. He took her to the Golden Gate Bridge and Baker Beach, and bought her first pair of hiking shoes after she broke a heel on one of their nature walks.

You Mi couldn't believe she had been living amid such a breathtaking landscape for months, yet had never seen it. She had forgotten that beauty even existed.

In South Korea, You Mi's mother went to court with the money, to settle with all the collection agencies.

Then she called her daughter.
"It's over," she said.

You Mi wanted to believe her mother, but her heart wasn't in it. She now knew the cold truth -- that her life would never be simple again.”


Epilogue

“Inside a Korean restaurant in San Francisco, You Mi ran between the kitchen and the tables with little white bowls of appetizers.

Korean dinner always starts with numerous small plates: kimchi, fish cake, daikon radish, black beans, anchovies, sesame-soaked cucumber and acorn jelly. It's sweaty apron work for minimum wage.

With the Korean custom of not tipping, she was lucky to take home $30 a night from the customers.

But she was free.

It was June 2006. It had been a little over two years since she stepped out of Sun Spa for the last time.

The men who arranged You Mi's trip from Korea, her brokers in Los Angeles, and the madams and taxi drivers who controlled her movements were among those named in Operation Gilded Cage, a federal indictment of 45 Koreans in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Although two dozen masseuses agreed to testify in San Francisco, none of the 29 people charged in connection with Korean sex trafficking in the Bay Area has gone to trial. Ten have pleaded guilty to lesser alien-harboring or money-laundering charges, and most of them were sentenced to less than a year in custody and fined less than $5,000. The woman who operated Suk Hee, where You Mi refused to work in North Beach, was ordered to forfeit $1.2 million.

The two suspected San Francisco ringleaders -- the only two charged with sex trafficking -- are still awaiting trial.

News of Operation Gilded Cage spread quickly through the Korean community. You Mi learned that some of the women taken from the massage parlors might qualify for a T-1 visa for trafficking victims, allowing them to stay in the country for three years and then apply for a green card. Only those who could prove they were enslaved by "force, fraud or coercion" would receive the special visa.

Ivy Lee, an attorney specializing in human trafficking at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco, helped You Mi apply for the T-1 visa. After a five-month investigation, the government concluded that You Mi was a sex-trafficking victim and granted her the visa on July 25.

You Mi is ready for her new life in California. She has fallen in love with the landscape and the relaxed attitude about gender roles. It amazes her to see women running companies or running errands in ponytails and sweats.

And she has fallen in love. The relationship between You Mi and her boyfriend lasted outside the artificial environment of the massage parlor. (Her boyfriend asked to remain anonymous in this story so they can maintain a private life together.)

But she never truly can escape her past.

Today, seven of the 10 alleged San Francisco brothels raided in Operation Gilded Cage are still open for business, including Sun Spa.

Despite increased federal and local attention, sex trafficking still thrives in the Bay Area.

The explosion of sex trafficking in California led lawmakers this year to make the state one of the few with its own human-trafficking law.

For You Mi, her time as a sex slave has left a permanent bruise on her soul. A year of her life was taken away. Her innocence is gone. Her trust obliterated. Tension is woven into her personality.

You Mi misses her family. She misses her life before it went so wrong. The T-1 visa has given her a sense of justice, but she wants men to know what really goes on inside a massage parlor.

"Most customers come into a massage parlor thinking nothing is wrong; that it's a job we choose," she said. "It doesn't occur to them that we are slaves."

Read Full Article: Part 4