Deterring the Right to Justice: Structural Coercion and the Trafficking of Filipino Female Entertainers in South Korea

This empirical study explores the reasons Filipino female entertainers trafficked to South Korea cannot seek justice as victims in Korea. To answer this question, the article considers the cause of trafficking to be the structural coercion embedded in unsynchronized migration policies in the Philippines and Korea. By examining the discrepant views and power asymmetry of these two countries, I show how they have led to the development of unsynchronized migration policies that result in knowledge gaps in the processes of recruiting and transporting migrants. These gaps allow the conflation of legal and illegal operations and the alignment of government officials and private agents. Consequently, women are deceived into engaging in prostitution in Korea through nonconsensual illegal exits from the Philippines coordinated by corrupt immigration officers and illegal brokers. This article also argues that unsynchronized migration policies lead to systemic coercion, in which the deception, intimidation, and forced migration of women by private entities align with state laws and regulations. This creates path-dependent journeys that affect women’s after-migration situations. The cycle of deception, intimidation, exploitation, and deportation of women has deprived them of exit options from abusive scenarios and from the right to seek justice in Korea, discharging the Korean government of its responsibility to the victims of trafficking. The study pushes the debates on prostitution and trafficking into considering the coalescence of state, legal, and private entities in transnational migration, revealing how state violence against women is hidden behind the concept of victim consent and the malicious conduct of business entities.