Female Police Chief Gets Results in Assault on Teen Prostitution

Her office is filled with flowers, reporters fight to interview her, television cameras follow her through the streets, and more than a hundred calls pour in daily from adoring fans--ranging from South Korea’s president and top politicians to people in the boonies in search of marital advice.

South Korea’s latest media darling is no movie star or leggy model, but a 55-year-old mother of two who sports a chest full of ribbons. Senior Superintendent Kim Kang Ja, the first woman to be named a municipal police chief in this male-dominated society, is making headlines with a high-visibility campaign to wipe out teen prostitution in Seoul’s biggest red-light district.

Civic groups and the media say she has accomplished more in a few weeks than her male predecessors have in decades.

“Kim Kang Ja Has Arrived,” proclaimed one headline. “The Lady of Steel With Rural Roots.”

Kim’s campaign has already spurred passage of a long-stalled law to publicly identify men found consorting with teenage prostitutes. And her efforts have inspired--or shamed--her superiors into launching a nationwide counterpart, what one columnist dubbed “Operation Hey Big Boy.”

In addition, in a society where “fallen women” are traditionally shunned and left with few options but to continue in the sex trade, Kim has begun working with women’s groups and local companies to create halfway houses and to help find jobs for abused teen victims of prostitution.

At “Texas Miari”--her precinct’s notorious red-light district, named for the American GIs who were its first customers--prostitution is big business. An estimated 20,000 people rake in $88 million annually at about 260 sex shops.

A recent walk through the crowded alleys, however, suggested that business is a bit slow these days. Here and there, four or five women wearing suggestive clothing peered out from behind curtains. But several storefronts were shuttered, with large stickers citing underage hiring violations.

A woman sitting outside one brothel complained that media attention is driving away customers. A man grumbled that Kim’s campaign is hurting business almost as badly as the nation’s debt crisis.

Back at her office at the Chongam Police Station, Kim said she has not always enjoyed such success. After she joined the force in 1970, her rise through the ranks was often greeted with abuse from male colleagues. On several occasions, her superiors balked at letting a woman supervise men.

Kim said she became interested in the issue of teenage prostitution in 1993, when she was asked to help a mother find her daughter who had been kidnapped into the sex trade. When she went to investigate, the kidnappers held her for three hours in a bid to intimidate her.

“I was flabbergasted when I saw 14-year-olds suffering from venereal disease, their eyes not even able to focus,” she said.

But while she has certainly caught the nation’s attention, some social critics question whether anyone can wipe out sexual exploitation of underage girls, especially in a country such as South Korea, where it is so deeply entrenched. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of teenage girls are engaged in prostitution at any given time in South Korean sex shops, bars, “love hotels” and karaoke bars.

“No single person can destroy this business,” said one longtime Texas Miari businessman. An editorial in the Korea Herald agreed: “Underage prostitution won’t disappear as long as there are clients willing to pay more for underage girls.”

To make a real difference, social critics say, the government will have to weaken the alleged links between police and the sex trade. Most brothels reportedly have trapdoors and secret escape routes and receive tip-offs before a major raid.

“Everyone knows the police and pimps collaborate,” said Kim Hyo Seon of the weekly paper Women’s News, who is not related to the crime fighter.

Acknowledging this, Senior Superintendent Kim has put female officers on patrol with men, hoping the women’s commitment to the cause will make them less susceptible to bribes.

“This really sets a good example for women,” said Lee Seung Koo, a 23-year-old physics student. “She’s really doing good work.”