North Korean authorities are recruiting young women to be part of a revived so-called "pleasure squad" that entertains dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a published report.The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo said that the group that used to perform for Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, was disbanded shortly after the elder Kim's death in December 2011. The members were made to sign a pledge of secrecy in exchange for money and gifts. According to the paper, the women who worked as entertainers received an amount of money worth $4,000 before returning to their hometowns.
"Pleasure squads" have existed in North Korea since the rule of the country's founder Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the present dictator. Officials were sent to select women and girls they deemed the prettiest to the dictator's many mansions, where they were expected to be available upon request.
Today, however, the Japanese military’s involvement in comfort stations is bitterly contested. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is engaged in an all-out effort to portray the historical record as a tissue of lies designed to discredit the nation. Mr. Abe’s administration denies that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes.The latest move came at the end of October when, with no intended irony, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party appointed Mr. Nakasone’s own son, former Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone, to chair a commission established to “consider concrete measures to restore Japan’s honor with regard to the comfort women issue.”
The usual story of child sex-tourism goes something like this. A predator from a rich country arranges a meeting with a fixer and travels to a poor country. The fixer could be a pimp, or even a family relation of the child. If so, the predator might shower the child’s family with gifts and money in exchange for being alone with his victim. Eventually, the offender flies home and returns to his normal life as if nothing had happened.However, the rapid spread of fast and cheap internet connections in the poor world, and particularly in South-East Asia, is adding a new twist to this nasty old story. It’s called “virtual trafficking”, where predators now meet children in video-chat rooms. According to the UN and America’s FBI, some 750,000 potential predators are online at any given moment. The FBI also estimates that there are at least 40,000 such chat-rooms. The new technology allows paedophiles to skip the expensive travel while still bringing victims right into their bedrooms half-way across the world.
Some people regard sexual activity while traveling as a way of enhancing their travel experience. However, social problems arise when particular countries or cities acquire a reputation as a destination or become attractive for sex tourism. Attractions for sex tourists can include lower costs for sexual services in the destination country, more favorable local attitudes to prostitution, separation from person's normal social circle and physical environment, because prostitution is either legal or there is indifferent law enforcement, and access to child prostitution.