South Korean Women Sue U.S. Military for Decades-Long Role in Sex Trade

Dozens of "comfort women" filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit to target the U.S. military’s role in their exploitation.

By Danielle Han | September 9, 2025 | 10:24am

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South Korean Women Sue U.S. Military for Decades-Long Role in Sex Trade

A Naval base in Busan, South Korea. Photo: Getty Images

When America’s Pete Hegseth ran straight to social media to DeptofWar. But across the Pacific and amid all the ado, South Korean women were gearing up on a front of their own: On Monday, they filed a lawsuit against the U.S. army to hold it accountable for its role in their prostitution.

In the reported by the New York Times, the lawsuit comes about three years after a similar one was filed against the South Korean government, in which it was found guilty of encouraging the prostitution and forcing victims to be terrible,” one former sex worker recalled during the proceedings. “And we believe that the government was responsible for its negligence.” From the NYT:

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Under rules that the U.S. military and South Korean officials worked out, comfort women had to be tested twice a week, according to the women and unsealed documents. The U.S. military conducted random inspections at clubs, rounding up women without a valid registration or V.D. test card. The women had to wear numbered badges or name tags at clubs, and the U.S. military kept “hot sheets” — or photo files of the women — at base clinics to help infected soldiers identify contacts.

The infected women, but not their G.I. partners, were locked up in facilities with barred windows where they were heavily dosed with penicillin; some died of penicillin shock, according to the women. The U.S. military demanded the isolation of the women in such facilities, and the local government acquiesced, the women’s lawyers said, citing supporting documents.

The history of South Korea’s sex workers. And young women and girls were used to fill the gap.

Despite their win against the South Korean government in 2023, the women are still pursuing justice—this time, to find the “projected to cost at least $1 billion.)

Speaking under anonymity, one woman testified during Monday’s news conference that she was just 16 years old when she was prostituted to army soldiers. According to her, the U.S. military knew minors were a part of its sex-trade problem—but did nothing to actually intervene. But her story is not an anomaly. Speaking to Politico in 2015, another sex worker who had moved to one of South Korea’s “camptowns,” a common sight near American military bases, said she’d moved to the area in 1956 when she was just 18 years old. “Looking back,” she explained, “I think my body was not mine, but the government’s and the U.S. military’s.”

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