Korean Trafficking Victim Returns to Seoul

Following the recent brothel raids in Dallas and arrests of "madams" like Kyong "Jackie" Roberts, Hannah, a 24-year old South Korean woman has just returned to her home country from Dallas where she was tricked and trafficked into working as a prostitute.

The Dallas Morning News reports on her story which we've included in its entirety here:

At a TGI Friday's restaurant, Hannah blends seamlessly with the crowd of young Korean urbanites. Fur-lined jacket. Green Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. Dangling gold earrings. Perfect makeup.

The 24-year-old had returned to Korea a week earlier, sent home from Dallas, where she worked as a prostitute for three years.

On this cold January night over dinner, she talks through a translator about her flight to America and back.

It began when she was a 21-year-old in Seoul dreaming of studying in the United States. She found a broker through the Internet who told her that she could make $10,000 a month working in a club. There was no mention of prostitution, she said.

He told her the trip would cost $13,000. From Seoul she flew to Mexico City, where she met another broker who took her to the California border. There, smugglers stole her pocket money and added to her debt as she crossed into California. She was driven to Dallas and dropped at a spa called Venetian Body Work.

When she arrived, "I couldn't work because I cried so hard."

In the beginning, she said, she had a skin allergy and couldn't work much. The owner threatened her.

She still remembers the first time she had sex for money. "After the first time, I cried for over a month."

She tried to escape once, running away to California, but she quickly realized she had nowhere to turn and came back to Dallas. The brothel owner beat her for a month.

She began working at Ace Palace, one of 10 to 15 women who slept on the carpet without beds or blankets.

"Even on our periods, if the brothel master wanted us to work, we had to work," she said. "A woman who is bleeding or is crying . . . even though they are crying, they have to work."

She finally repaid her debt shortly before she was arrested in the fall, while living in an apartment. She said she was never interviewed by a nongovernmental group and knows little about protections available to trafficking victims.

In Seoul, Hannah is now a woman with a secret. She worries about finding a job. She wants to return to America and become a law student.

"My whole family thought I was in America as a student," she said.