Somaly Mam

A baby girl was born in Mondulkiri, eastern Cambodia, in 1970 before the country`s civil war broke out. Even before she turned 5, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot began to turn Cambodia into a bloodbath. As she left her hometown, she was raised by her abusive relatives, not her parents. Her indebted relatives sold her to a pimp in Phnom Penh when she was 12. Her life became one filled with rape, whipping, electrical torture and hunger as a sex slave.

Somaly Mam, the protagonist of this story, defines the period with one simple sentence: “I was dead.” Her sex slavery was ended thanks to a French aid worker in 1993 as customers did not want her because she was no longer young. Here begins Mam`s greatness. Despite her body and heart being in tatters, she neither pitied herself nor denied her past. She put her thought “I wish I had someone who can help me” into practice. Returning from France where she lived after her rescue, she declared war on human trafficking in Cambodia.

In 1996, Mam set up the non-profit organization AFESIP, or Acting for Women in Distressing Situations, with the help of her French friends and rescued more than 7,000 sex slaves. She said rehabilitation was more important than rescuing them. Mam provided education to the rescued women and occupational training such as sewing and beauty care. When they were about to re-enter society, she extended them micro credit and helped them stand on their own two feet. She founded the Somaly Mam Foundation in New York in 2007 and turned into a human rights activist. For her efforts, she received the 2012 POSCO Chungam Award in Seoul Monday.

Many Southeast Asian prostitutes engage in the sex trade voluntarily but others are kidnapped or traded for low prices in countries such as Cambodia and Nepal. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a March 15 meeting on combating human trafficking at the White House, “Around the world, some 27 million men, women and children are enslaved.” Forcing enslaved women to provide sex is a form of modern slavery. Many North Korean female defectors are sold in rural Chinese areas or get ensnared by organized crime. When a country is doomed, women are the first to be sold.

Editorial Writer Chung Sung-hee (shchung@donga.com)