Brazil cracks down on ring to traffic women to S. Korea

Asian Political News, June 9, 2003   RIO DE JANEIRO, June 6 Kyodo

Brazilian police have cracked down on a South Korean gang about to traffic three Brazilian women to Seoul, authorities said Friday.

Sao Paulo police arrested Bong Keun Park, 35, Jung Sup Choi, 32, and Alexsandra Santos, 23, of Brazilian nationality, shortly before they were to take a plane to Seoul, the authorities said.

They said Santos told the police she is the girlfriend of a South Korean national named Jon Jin who owns a karaoke club in Seoul, and that the ring planned to take three other Brazilian women to South Korea.

She was quoted as saying the South Korean mafia has threatened to kill both her and her boyfriend if she refused to travel to Brazil and help the two South Korean gang members obtain Brazilian women, the authorities said.

The police said the gang was found with three Brazilian women aged 19, 20 and 23, who were lured with false promises of working as dancers at clubs in Seoul. The gang paid the youngest girl $1,000 and each of the two other girls $500 in advance, according to the police.
 

''They promised us we would work as dancers at a karaoke club and would not be forced to go out with customers,'' the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo quoted one of the women as saying.

The gang recruited the women in two Brazilian states and took them to Sao Paulo, where they were kept at a downtown hotel by force, the police said.

One of the women managed to contact her family and they informed the police, who found the group at the hotel. The gang told the girls their families would be killed if they refused to travel to Seoul, the police said.

''The South Koreans and the Brazilian woman have been arrested for traffic of women and may serve a maximum prison sentence of eight years in Brazil,'' said police officer Clovis de Araujo, 39, the head of a special police force in charge of detaining the gang.

The police said each gang member would make $2,000 per woman taken to South Korea. They promised that the women would be able to sign a six-month contract on arrival in Asia and that each woman would be paid $90 a night, the police said.

''We were scared when they told us we would be sold. We were relieved when the police arrived,'' one of the women told the daily.

It is estimated that some 100,000 people are trafficked from Latin America and the Caribbean annually, chiefly women and children, who are sold for sexual exploitation.