Foreign med school graduate, 4 others forced to work as prostitutes

Police in Taejon were investigating five women from the former Soviet Union on suspicions that they worked as prostitutes.

¡°We sold our bodies two or three times a day for more than a month, but we didn't receive any money,¡±s aid Erina, the alias of a 29-year-old woman who graduated from a six-year medical college in Kyrgyzstan and worked as an intern for a year.

In November last year, she saw a newspaper that read ¡°Invitation for women to work in Korea. Guarantees $1,000 a month.¡± She answered the ad and flew to Korea along with a friend identified as Rudino, 24, who worked at the same hospital.

As she wasn't receiving any money from her job as an intern at home due to economic difficulties, she had high hopes of earning good money in Korea. As soon as they arrived at Kimpo International Airport on Nov. 29 last year along with three other women, they were transported by three people, including a taxi driver identified only as Lee, 36, to Taejon and put up in a tenement house with a floor space of only 13 pyong.

Besides being forced to work as prostitutes, the women had to subsist on a diet of little more than bread and occasionally eggs. They protested their captivity but they had been relieved of their passports and return airplane tickets. They were told that their captors were part of the Korean Mafia and that they had connections with the Russian police.

The police arrested Lee on charges of paying $15,000 to a wanted Russian criminal to hire the women and of pocketing 27 million won by forcing them to engage in prostitution. The police also booked without detention two other men and a patent attorney identified as Moon, 39.

The five women were transferred to the Exit and Entry Control Bureau of the Ministry of Justice and are awaiting a forceful deportation order.