ABSTRACT
On December 22, 2001, Cherry-Lyn arrived at Inchon International Airport on the outskirts of Seoul, where she was picked up by her Korean promotion agent, whom she called her manager. She was driven for an hour and a half through the cold December snow to Top Hat Club in Anjong-ri, about fifty kilometres south of Seoul, where she was employed to work for one year as a singer and hostess. She only stayed there for two and a half months because, as she recalled, “We have to dance [pole dance]. No food. No salary. No hot water. And we have to go with customers. That’s why we all run away from Top Hat”. After running away Cherry-Lyn and her five Filipina co-workers found work in a factory about thirty kilometres away, but the shifts were thirteen to fifteen hours per day, six and sometimes seven days a week, and the work was exhausting. So she decided to try her luck in a different club. She called her manager and laughed as she recalled how she begged him, “I want to come back. Don’t put me in jail”. Cherry-Lyn’s manager decided to place her in Olympia Club in Anjong-ri, but it was only one week before she again requested to change clubs because Olympia also had pole dancing. From April to early November Cherry-Lyn worked at Yes Club in Song-tan, which she thought she could handle because it was “only a karaoke club, and no dancing”.
