'Sex Slave' series called misleading

Harry Mok
October 24, 2006

The Chronicle stories highlight the trafficking of prostitutes from South Korea to the United States and makes extensive use of anecdotal information from one woman who says she was forced to work in massage parlors and brothels.

Certainly titillating stuff. Seems like there was a lot of research done, but there is a leap of faith that this one person is telling the whole truth. That's not to discount the issue of the smuggling of prostitutes, especially coerced or forced sex slavery, which no doubt exists. Then there are all the issues that the opinion piece brings up.

Contributor: 

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

Comments

Comments

justme wrote on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 4:42pm
while i certainly feel sorry for what one of the girls profiled had to go through, i found it unbelievably irresponsible of her to rack up $40K in shopping debt
Anonymous wrote on Wed, 10/25/2006 - 11:38pm
I understand, partly, why the Korean American community is upset. They get hardly any coverage in the Chronicle or any mainstream media and when they do, it's about a sex slave. Perhaps this series would not be so upsetting if there was more well-rounded coverage to begin with. Then it would just be one story among many about various aspects of the KA experience.However, I hardly found the series to be written as "entertainment for the masses," or the photographs to be titalating, as the signers of the letter write. As a reader, I understand this is the story about one person, who is emblamatic of an underground problem, not all Koreans.And this whole "the vast majority of whom are well-educated professionals and hardworking families" I find rather offputting. Hello model minority?