Summit to discuss South Korean brothel rescue
The Foreign Ministry will discuss with its South Korean counterpart the problems of Thai women illegally working in South Korea after the rescue of 17 victims who were forced into performing illegal sex work in a massage parlour.
The group was rescued after a Thai woman handed a note to a cashier at a convenience store pleading for help.
Busadee Santipitaks, director-general of the ministry’s Department of Information, said Thailand and South Korea will hold the 3rd Thai-South Korea Bilateral Consular Dialogue late this month in Bangkok.
The meeting will be attended by senior representatives from the Department of Consular Affairs and other related agencies from both Thailand and South Korea.
A main topic of discussion will focus on the problem of Thai citizens being denied entry at South Korean airports. The discussion is also aimed at reducing the number of Thai citizens who overstay in South Korea and improve cooperation between the two countries in protecting Thai workers’ rights and welfare.
“We hope the dialogue will result in a satisfying outcome which can help the two countries solve the problems,” Ms Busadee said.
The latest case that made headlines in South Korean media involved Korean authorities rescuing a group of Thai women from brothels in Busan. Ms Busadee said the group entered South Korea in March without contacting the Thai embassy upon arrival.
South Korean police recently confirmed to the Thai embassy that 17 were rescued. Twelve of them were forced to work as massage therapists and five were forced into prostitution, she said.
All of them had their passports — which had been seized by the parlour operator — returned and the women are safely back in Thailand. They also received overdue salary payments. Police have pressed charges against the operator.
The rescue happened in mid-May but was disclosed to South Korean media last week. According to the reports, the woman was escorted by a man to a convenience store. She managed to slip a note to the cashier alerting her to her plight. The cashier understood her situation and offered to call the police for her. But the Thai woman feared her captor would become wise to this.
Instead, the woman gave the cashier a phone number while pretending to be collecting the shop’s points reward. After the pair left, the cashier called the police. Police went to inspect buildings around the shop but they could not identify the building the woman was detained in.
The only clue was the phone number the woman gave. Police tracked the number and found that it belonged to a man identified as Lee, 38, who had a police record for running a brothel named “Kiss Room”. Police raided the brothel and rescued the women.