At the Intersection of Urban Renewal and Anti-trafficking Projects: Neoliberalism and a Red-light District in Seoul, South Korea

These women have lived at the intersection of multiple social, economic, and urban reforms since the new millennium–part of South Korea’s neoliberal development since the late 1990s. Most notably, they were targeted by the global anti-trafficking initiative, which was interpreted locally as an anti-prostitution drive. In the name of combatting trafficking and forced prostitution, the South Korean government passed two pieces of legislation in 2004 that expanded police power, in order to crackdown on and penalize prostitution while providing welfare support for authentic victims. Although the laws prompted mass protests and even a hunger strike from sex workers, both the government and women’s organizations hailed the laws as a success in protecting women’s human rights. The threat of new police surveillance was simultaneous with the rapid modernization and gentrification of the metropolitan city. In 2004, the same year that the anti-prostitution laws were passed, the Seoul Metropolitan government announced its blueprint for urban renewal. The plan denounced sex workers–along with working class residents, small business-owners, and street vendors–as irreconcilable with the city’s middle class ambience. Such denunciations paved the way for the idea that the progress of the city depended on purging the spaces in which these individuals lived and worked.