SEOUL, South Korea — The Constitutional Court in South Korea on Thursday rejected a challenge to the country’s ban on the sex trade, handing a defeat to prostitutes who have campaigned for years to decriminalize their work.
“The majority view insists that prostitution should not be protected by law because it harms human dignity,” Justice Cho wrote in his dissent. “But nothing harms human dignity more than a threat to survival.”
Last year, the Constitutional Court struck down a decades-old law making adultery punishable by up to two years in prison, a landmark ruling that analysts said reflected changing social attitudes toward sex in this still largely conservative country.
Prostitution has always been illegal in South Korea, but for decades the authorities turned a blind eye to it, and red-light districts prospered. That approach changed after 2002, when 14 young prostitutes died in a fire, trapped in their rooms. Amid a public outcry, the government enacted the 2004 statute, which not only outlaws prostitution but calls on the authorities to take active measures to eradicate it.
