성매매는 비범죄화해야 하는가? : 해외사례를 통해 성매매를 다시 생각해보기

Abstract

Prostitution has been one of the fiercely debated issues in the contemporary South Korean society. A new debate recently resumed when triggered by the Constitutional Court’s decision on adultery saying that the criminalization of adultery is unconstitutional on the ground that it violates the sexual selfdetermination. Prostitution in this article covers only voluntary prostitution. Prostitutes who provides sexual service for the male customer are limited to adult females for the current article. Voluntary prostitution means that an individual woman has freedom to choose the profession of prostitution and freedom to leave the job whenever she decides to quit the career. Any type of coerced prostitution is excluded in the scope of this paper. That type of prostitution is itself crime, not because it is prostitution but because it violates human right, self-determination, or other criminal codes. For example, kidnapping or defrauding a women for making her prostitute is itself crime, since kidnapping or defrauding is itself crime regardless of whether a woman later becomes a prostitute or not. It is also a type of crime that a prostitute has no freedom to quit her job and coerced to continue to work. It is a kind of false imprisonment, and therefore, it is by nature crime. This paper argues with the criminalization (or decriminalization) issue of prostitution. Thus, only considering matter should be the voluntary prostitution. Involuntary prostitution is excluded from the argument of this article. This paper introduces the historical and foreign experience on prostitution. Other societies faced to a similar situation like the contemporary South Korean society. Such experience of other historical and foreign societies may provide a worthy illustration to deal with prostitution for the South Korean society. Cases of other societies show that the prostitution issue of the South Korean is not unique rather universal. Lessons can be drawn from such cases of the other societies. The current paper suggests decriminalization of prostitution. It asks a substantial question: why prostitution should be decriminalized. For doing so, it examines the historical contexts of prostitution, the causes of prostitution, and the problems associated with prostitution and criminalization of prostitution. The grounds of decriminalization of prostitution include three aspects: logical, ethical, and practical. Prostitution should be decriminalized.