성매매방지정책의 검토와 성매매처벌법의 개정방향

The Act on the Punishment of Intermediating in Sex Trade and Associated Acts (henceforth “The Act”), enacted in 2004, prescribed sex trade as a crime and provided measures for preventing such acts. However, along with the enlarged commercial sex industry, regulation of sex trade hardly deals well with the reality. The Act currently is legislated to penalize every party involved in sex trade. Adhering to prohibitive standpoints, it has been claimed since the introduction of the Act that those who voluntarily engage in sex trade should be decriminalized. However, sex trade is not only a moral or customary issue but also a violation of human dignity and liberty. Taking advantage of someone’s body for one’s own sexual satisfaction cannot be legitimatized and, thus, in principle, all such acts, including the voluntary ones, need to be punished. While the current law on punishing sex trade separately defines the solicited of sex (victims of sex trade) and those who solicited sex (criminals of sex trade), it is hard to draw a line between the two. When classed as the solicited of sex, one is protected under the law and is exempt from being punished; when classed as those who solicited sex, one becomes the subject of punishment. Thus, it is considerably important to clearly distinguish one from the other. If the current Act is to be revised, most importantly, indices of distinguishing sex trade victims need to be created and whoever are considered as victims should not be punished. In addition, instead of solely accusing them of intermediating in sex trade, the intermediaries (or pimps) must be checked during the investigation process whether they were forcing the trade of sex.