Interview with Documentary Film Host Nation Director Kowoon Lee
By Narang 2017-03-22
Published
March 22, 2017
Translated
by Joyce
The production company name “R&R” was
written on the business card that director Kowoon Lee handed to me when I first
met her one year ago. R&R, the abbreviation for Rest & Recreation, refers to the industries created for the health and well-being of
U.S. soldiers in areas where the U.S. military is stationed. Among those
industries, the most representative is the sex industry. To give your
production company such a name! I laughed at the director’s wit.
The title of Lee’s documentary film, Host
Nation (2016), refers to a nation where U.S. military is stationed.
The film discusses the countries that become “hosts” catering to U.S. troops
and mobilizing the bodies of poor women to provide soldiers with relaxation and
entertainment.
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| Kowoon Lee’s documentary Host Nation (2016) |
The film traces the process of how a Filipina,
Maria, winds up in the U.S. military camptown sex industry in Korea. Also in
the film is Joy, another Filipina, who has reported her Korean club owner for
forcing her into prostitution.
Host Nation, however,
does not focus on the Filipinas being forced into prostitution in Korea or how
terrible their experiences are. Instead, it exposes the various people involved
in the industry and has them explain their situations in their own words. These
are Yolie, a “manager” who recruits women in the Philippines; broker "Mr.
Jeong," Yolie's business partner who sends women to Korea; and even
"Papa Jeong" who receives the women and operates a club in a camptown
in Korea.
The director says she "wanted to show how this
ecosystem, which develops wherever U.S. troops are stationed, profits off the
backs of women." I met with her in the days before her film’s
screening at the Indie Documentary Film Festival.
-I didn't think the film would unfold in
this way. I had assumed the camera would follow the lives of camptown women, so
the film was original and surprising. I am curious why you took this approach.
I think there are people who are exceptional at
relaying the voices of the marginalized. It's difficult for me to do that
because it's too heartbreaking. Instead, I wanted to discuss the system itself.
I wanted to film the stories of those we don't get to meet often, the
perpetrators or those who explicitly cause harm. I wanted to expose the players
of the playing field—the camptown—which U.S. troops created decades ago. It is
a story about who they are and how ordinary the faces of "human
trafficking criminals" are.
 |
| Kowoon Lee, director of the documentary Host Nation (2016) |
-It couldn't have been easy to get the
chance to film people engaging in illegal activity. How did you meet your
subjects?
When I first met club owner Papa Jeong in Gunsan's
America Town in 2013, it was when the U.S. military announced its policy to
prohibit U.S. troops’ entry into the clubs. (Korea’s) human trafficking became
a problem internationally, so the military began to step in and regulate it.
Because the soldiers couldn’t enter the clubs, the clubs were bound to go out
of business. The club owners got angry and started protesting. For decades,
U.S. troops and camptown club owners had maintained close ties while providing
services to U.S. soldiers, yet when there is criticism coming from outside, the
club owners are the only ones being criticized.
Papa Jeong told me to “go to the Philippines to see
for myself what the girls are thinking when coming here to make money.” He
said, “Girls got trafficked back in the days before they had internet access,
but nowadays they come knowing. They agree to everything and come, so why are
they calling us human trafficking criminals? The girls make money here and pay
for their parents’ surgeries and buy homes.” So I traveled to the Philippines
without much of a plan and asked Papa Jeong to “connect me to a broker since
I’ve arrived in the Philippines.” After some twists and turns, I finally met
the broker “Mr. Jeong” and Yolie the manager.
-How did they become involved in this
work?
After meeting them, I saw that they, too, had come
from poverty, and they were people whose only assets were their own bodies.
Yolie grew up in the sex industry. Papa Jeong opened a club after working as a
bouncer and going around to catch women who had run away from the clubs of
Gunsan’s America Town. Mr. Jeong started this after working in the business of
importing Russian models to clubs for U.S. troops. He said he took a break to
do work in the [legitimate] trade business, but after squandering everything
away and being swindled, he returned to this business because it was the only
work he was able to do.
 |
| Kowoon Lee’s documentary Host Nation (2016) |
-In the film, the entire process
of Filipinas’ recording their audition videos, receiving E-6 visas (performance
visa, entertainer visa), and coming to Korea to work in the sex industry is
shown. Explain this process in more detail.
There are two different beginnings. The “scouts” in
every corner of the Philippines approach you and ask, “Do you want to go to
Korea to work?” or you hear about someone you know or a cousin who has gone to
Korea and start thinking, “Should I try, too?” Once you make the decision to
go, the scout connects you to a manager in the city.
Then you go to a manager and a Korean broker and
have an audition. Because the women are from the countryside, the manager
provides housing, has them practice singing, and processes their visas. They
record and send off a video of their singing, and if the Korean Media Rating
Board gives a recommendation and the Korean Ministry of Justice says it’s okay
to process their visa, they can go to the Korean Consulate for an interview.
You come to Korea if you pass the interview, but
you cannot come to Korea directly from the Philippines. This is because the
Philippine government has banned the departure of those who have a Korean E-6
visa. Because there has been a sharp increase in international criticism that
the E-6 visa is a channel leading to prostitution, exiting the country with one
has been prohibited altogether. So, they hire professionals to inconspicuously
detach the E-6 visa from women’s passports. If you go to a third country on a
tourist visa, the partners there find you a Korea-bound flight, and from there
you reattach the E-6 visa and board the airplane.
-The Philippine government does not
permit this because of the risk of human trafficking, but I wonder if the
Korean government has taken any action at all. How long does it take Filipinas
to enter Korea after their auditions?
It takes women nine months to a year to come to Korea.
They train and live at the training center during this period, and at first I
didn’t realize why. One reason is that they are from the countryside, so they
live far away and don’t have the money to go home. However, during the training
period the center provides only meals, so those who don’t have a way of earning
money yet have a family to support end up going into debt. After one year, you
can’t back out because of the mounting debt. So ultimately, when you come to
Korea and your manager makes you do uncomfortable work, even though you think,
“Huh? This is weird,” you can’t easily quit. You are in debt so can’t say, “I
don’t like this, I want to go back.” Your family has expectations, and it would
be hard to endure their looks that say, “You dummy, you were fooled and you’ve
come back broke?” Due to these circumstances and your sense of responsibility,
you hold out “until you work off your debt – just one more month, and then one
more...”
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| Kowoon Lee’s documentary Host Nation (2016) |
-I think it’s possible
that the scene in which Maria says she is happy working in Korea portrays her
job as a “cool” job. Aside from women being bar hostesses, aren’t many women
forced into prostitution? As Papa Jeong says, do Filipinas really come knowing
everything?
The cases are diverse. There are some women who
think, “Since I’ll be working in a club, the job will probably just involve
drinking alcohol with men,” and come thinking they will be able to control
their customers. It is similar to what Yolie says in the film: “It depends on
how you do your work.” But honestly, these conditions don’t exist. There was a
case of a club owner’s friends sexually assaulting Filipinas on the night of
their arrival to Korea as a way of instilling fear. Then the women, in a
flustered and fearful state, go into the club’s rooms and have to do all sorts
of things.
Papa Jeong is not a club owner who abuses women or
forces them to do “round two” (prostitution). However, the ones who seem nice
have other skills. Because they seem nice, women continue to supply them with
others— their
friends, and their friends’ friends — on a larger scale.
I got to know Filipinas personally, and there is
little difference between their experiences and those of elderly Korean
camptown women. There were Korean women who supported their poor parents,
siblings, and children. Among them are those who were seriously taken advantage
of and experienced severe abuse, and those who married U.S. soldiers and held
onto them tightly to escape poverty. Even now there are various cases. For the
migrant women who come to the camptowns, how each one makes out in such a harsh
place depends primarily on luck. Into whose hands she falls, what kind of club
owner or managers she ends up with. These conditions are based on luck, whereas
other conditions depend on one’s own micro-strategies.
-I was curious about what thoughts you
had as you listened to people like Papa Jeong and Mr. Jeong defend themselves.
I thought that this is just how Koreans are.
Honestly, what created this image of Korea today is the myth that “all I need
is money, and I must succeed,” isn’t it? If you listen to the middle-aged or
elderly female club owners, they all have pride that they “started with nothing
in an empty lot yet have gained this much.” They seem to have forgotten who was
sacrificed and how difficult things were for those people. “I raised my kids
honorably. I sent them all to study abroad.” That seems very Korean.
Then all of the club owners you meet criticize the
Filipinas. They say that they’re lazy... That if they work at a place like
this, they should be saving money and thinking about how to succeed, and not
just eat and play around. (Laughter.) This seems very Korean.
 |
| Kowoon Lee’s documentary Host Nation (2016) |
-The E-6 visa has continued to be
a social issue... What changes have occurred in the camptown sex industry?
Now that the issue has been exposed, the Korean
Immigration Office is going into the camptown adult entertainment
establishments to inspect visas. If there are traces of visas having been
detached and reattached, Immigration is detaining women and deporting them.
Filipinas have been targeted primarily. The brokers are having to get more
involved and the club owners are having to pay higher amounts of money. On top
of that, because the military base is also restricting U.S. soldiers’ entry
into the clubs, many of the U.S. soldier-exclusive clubs in America Town have
turned into clubs servicing Koreans.
They say that as the number of clubs servicing
Koreans has increased in Gunsan, the clubs have gained popularity in the larger
region. For example, they say that after a first round of drinks in Daejeon, it
takes only two hours to get to Gunsan by “bullet taxi.” They say, “There’s fun
in taking your pick of women by country.” Because migrant women can only work
in foreigner-exclusive clubs, it is illegal for clubs servicing Koreans to
employ them, but that’s what is happening.
-Then is Papa Jeong also
doing business for Koreans now?
Papa Jeong is bringing in women from
Kyrgyzstan. Recently he has also brought over Russian women. (The Korean
government stopped issuing E-6 visas to Russians in 2003 because E-6 visa
holders’ involvement in prostitution became an issue in which even the Russian
government intervened; however, the Korean government recently resumed issuing
the visas.) Many women from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are also coming in. They
are entering on tourist visas, working for a few months, and reentering after a
short trip out of the country.
Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorest
countries in Central Asia, and a Kyrgyzstan air base became a U.S. air base
when the United States went to war with Afghanistan (in 2001 to 2014, a war
started by the U.S. and British military operations to respond to the September
11th terrorist attacks; the objective of the invasion was to
arrest Osama bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda). Combat planes took off from
Kyrgyzstan to attack Afghanistan. A country with an Islamic cultural
background, Kyrgyzstan did not have a sex industry problem until the U.S. air
base was established and Korean men instituted one.
Although U.S. troops withdrew and left three years
ago, once an ecosystem is put in place, it runs and sustains itself naturally.
An endless supply of women is needed, and money is made off the backs of these
women.
 |
| Kowoon Lee’s documentary Host Nation (2016) |
-“The military cannot do without the
bodies of women.” Ultimately, is this the fundamental problem?
It is not only Korea. This scene unfolds wherever
the U.S. military is present. Whether she is Filipina or Chinese, her skin
color does not matter. One race is simply replaced with another. And the source
of supply is women of poor countries. There are no good jobs for women in their
home countries, and women who can’t find good jobs even abroad become a
never-ending resource for the sex industry. If the economic status of the
Philippines improves, women of yet another country will become the replacement.
-What do you want to tell viewers coming
to watch the documentary?
I encourage viewers to consider how many women in
Korea, for starters, and then across the world, must use their bodies to
provide for the world, and to look at the various sides of this system. This is
not a problem involving one or two individuals. From the property owner who
rents out the space, to the club owner, to the bartender or driver at the club
who shuttles the women around - all of these accomplices know what is going on
and make a living off this system.
Family members live off the remittances that
Filipinas send, and even banks profit from the international wire transfer fees
that Filipinas pay. Like the Korean camptown women who earned U.S. dollars in
the 1960s and 1970s, these Filipinas are using their bodies to earn money for
others, yet they are the ones who have to face the most shame and blame.
Due to the limitations of filming, the stories of
Papa Jeong, Yolie, and Mr. Jeong can seem incomplete. Still, I hope viewers
will use the film’s hints to draw a larger picture.
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