ABSTRACT
A Seoul court in 2017 found in favour of a group of prostitution survivors who claimed that successive Korean governments, in collaboration with the US military, had facilitated their post-war sexual trading around US bases in South Korea. It is perhaps no coincidence that official recognition of state involvement in aspects of the historical organisation of women for prostitution arises in contemporary South Korea and not Japan, given the former country's approach to prostitution since 2004 as a form of trafficking that violates the human rights of women, as described herein, as opposed to the victim-blaming legal and policy approach of Japan. The Seoul court case usefully manifests an understanding of prostitution as comprising sexual slavery in more historical instances than just that of the Japanese military during the Second World War. South Korea is currently among eight countries adopting this kind of abolitionist approach to prostitution in law- and policy-making.
