According to the Yomiuri Shimbun:
North Korean defectors appear to be traveling to [Japan] from South Korea to earn an income in the adult entertainment industry, with a series of arrests having been made in connection with two adult businesses in Ueno, Tokyo.
A woman who defected from North Korean was deported from Japan to South Korea in mid-October after being convicted of illegally operating an adult salon in Ueno, according to Metropolitan Police Department sources.
The woman fled North Korea for South Korea in July 2004, but she came to Japan in April 2006 after experiencing financial difficulties in South Korea.
She opened the adult salon in January last year, and was arrested in May this year, the police said.
According to MPD sources, the woman sent part of her earnings from the shop to North Korea.
Nine other defectors from North Korea, all women, have also been arrested, the MPD said.
One, a massage parlor manager in her 40s, is an acquaintance of the deported woman. Investigative sources said she was arrested Oct. 4 on suspicion of violating the Adult Entertainment Businesses Law by operating the parlor in an area of Ueno where such businesses are prohibited.
The other eight women worked at the two Ueno businesses, and were arrested on suspicion of breaking the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law by working in violation of their visa status.
After defecting from North Korea, all 10 women entered a facility in South Korea that helps defectors settle in that nation, and all obtained status as South Korean nationals, according to the police.
However, the women found it hard to find work in South Korea. One was quoted by the police as saying: “We defected from North Korea because our lives there were difficult, but our lives didn’t improve in South Korea. In Japan, we earned a lot, partly thanks to the strong yen.”
The deported woman made profits of about 35 million yen at her salon between its opening and April this year. The woman said she had sent part of the income to relatives in North Korea, according to the police.
The MPD believes word that good money can be made by starting an adult entertainment business in Japan has been spreading among North Korean defectors.
The arrested massage parlor manager, meanwhile, is rumored to have once been a member of North Korea’s secret police, the MPD said.
The MPD intends to thoroughly investigate the woman, who comes from a northern region of North Korea and visited Japan a few years ago, by exchanging information with South Korean police.
The majority of North Korean defectors seek asylum in South Korea after fleeing the country, often by crossing the Tumen River that runs along the North Korea-China border.
According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, about 20,000 North Korean defectors currently live in South Korea.
However, many cannot assimilate to life in South Korea. Defectors’ employment rate is about 70 percent of that of the general public.
The Japanese government has accepted as North Korean defectors about 200 Korean-Japanese and their families who went to North Korea on its “return to the homeland” project, which began in 1959.
Most North Korean defectors were born and raised in North Korea, however.
Thought the exact number is not known, it is believed many North Korean defectors have visited Japan as South Koreans after obtaining South Korean nationality.
Also in the Korea Times:
Two pimps were arrested for trafficking female North Korean refugees in Japan and forcing them to engage in prostitution there, police said Friday. Police also arrested 13 female North Korean defectors for selling sex in red-light districts in Tokyo.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the arrested female pimps, surnamed Tak and Lee, ran a massage parlor in Ueno since November 2008. The two are also North Korean defectors to the South.
The women defectors were forced to sell sex for 6,000 to 10,000 yen per hour, it said. The pimps racked up more than 1.1 billion won in illegal gains.
Investigators said they coaxed jobless female defectors here with the promise that they could make more than 15 million won a month in Japan.
Some of the trafficked women said during questioning they engaged in the illegal business to cover fees needed to take their family members still in the North out of the poverty-stricken state.
“This was the first case to catch a group of prostitutes and pimps, all of whom are North Korean,” a police officer said.
A growing number of female defectors leave for Japan voluntarily in recent years to enter into the sex industry there, a desperate move to escape from financial hardship in the South, the officer said.
Read the full stories here:
N. Korea defectors in vice busts / Arrested women drawn to Japan by earning potential in adult industry
Daily Yomuri
10/24/2010
North Korean defectors caught selling sex in Japan
Korea Times
Park Si-soo
10/22/2010
